“No One is Safe”

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Women incarcerated in the Kadhimiyya women’s prison in 2006. Prior to 2009, Kadhimiyya was the only place in Baghdad where women charged with crimes were incarcerated. Security forces now detain women in prisons and other detention facilities across the country; many remain in detention for months and even years without trial.

Summary

In May 2012, Hanan al-Fadl (not her real name) was grocery
shopping in a market in central Baghdad when security forces dressed in
civilian clothing seized her, bundled her into a car, and drove her to the
office of a state institution, she told Human Rights Watch. There, she said,
they beat her, shocked her with electric cables, and drenched her in cold water
in an effort to force her to admit that she had taken a bribe. Hanan, a manager
at a state-affiliated company that approves construction projects, said she realized
she was paying the price for refusing to waive through a project in which the
contractor had used sub-standard materials. “I made a mistake,” she
said. “I didn’t know someone important in the government had a
stake in the project.” Beaten and tortured for hours, Hanan said she
refused to confess—until her interrogators threatened her teenage
daughter.

They pulled up her
picture on my mobile, and said, “Is this [name withheld]?” They
knew her name, where she went to school, everything. They said “We can
take her just like we took you.” I would have said anything at that
point.

After holding her for more than a day, security forces took
her to a judge, who refused to acknowledge bruises and swelling on her face,
she said. She did not have a lawyer. Four months later, a Baghdad court
convicted her of forgery and sentenced her to three years in prison, based
solely on her “confession” and the testimony of a “secret
informant.” When Human Rights Watch visited Hanan, she had been detained
in Baghdad’s Central Women’s prison for more than a year.

Hanan is one of thousands
of Iraqis imprisoned by a judicial system plagued by torture and rampant
corruption. Last April, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi
Pillay issued a scathing indictment of Iraq’s “not functioning”
justice system, citing numerous convictions based on confessions obtained under
torture and ill-treatment, a weak judiciary, and trial proceedings that fall
far short of international standards.

There are far fewer women than men in Iraqi prisons. As of June
2013, more than 1,100 women like Hanan were in Iraqi prisons and detention
centers, according to the Iraqi parliament’s Human Rights Committee and
the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). They estimated the male
prison population to be over 40,000.

Both men and women suffer from the severe flaws of the
criminal justice system. But women suffer a double burden due to their second
class status in Iraqi society. According to witness accounts and to information
numerous civil society activists and international nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) provided to Human Rights Watch, women are frequently
targeted not only for crimes they themselves are said to have committed, but to
harass male family or tribal members. Furthermore, once they have been
detained, and even if they are released unharmed, women are frequently
stigmatized by their family or tribe, who perceive them to have been
dishonored.

The abuse of women by Iraqi security forces and violations
of their rights by Iraq’s judiciary have become increasingly contentious issues.
Hanan’s account echoes Iraqi media reports that security forces have been
unlawfully detaining and abusing women—allegations that shocked Iraqis
already familiar with stories of abuse against men. As one human rights
activist said: “Normally, in Iraqi society, a man beating a woman in
public is impossible…. What’s happening to women shows that no one
is safe.”

In response to the media reports and to subsequent mass
protests against the treatment of women in detention, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
announced in January 2013 that he would task Deputy Prime Minister Hussein
al-Shahristani with overseeing reforms to the criminal justice system. But a
year later, the government has not made desperately needed reforms, and the
justice system remains plagued by corruption and abuses against women from all sects,
classes, and regions.

Main Findings

This report documents abuses to which the criminal justice
system subjects women during arrest, interrogation, trial, and imprisonment.

Between December 2012 and
April 2013, Human Rights Watch interviewed 27 women and 7 girls, Sunni and
Shia; their families and lawyers; medical service providers in women’s
prisons; civil society representatives; foreign embassy and United Nations
staff in Baghdad; Justice, Interior, Defense, and Human Rights ministry
officials, and two deputy prime ministers. We also reviewed court documents,
lawyers’ case files, and government decisions and reports.

The report finds that
security forces carry out illegal arrests and other due process violations
against women at every stage of the justice system, including threats and beatings. Israa Salah (not her real name), for example, entered her interview with
Human Rights Watch in Iraq’s death row facility in Baghdad’s
Kadhimiyya neighborhood on crutches. She said nine days of beatings, electric
shocks with an instrument known as “the donkey,” and falaqa
(when the victim is hung upside down and beaten on their feet) in March 2012
had left her permanently disabled. A split nose, back scars, and burns on her
breast were consistent with her alleged abuse. Israa was executed in September
2013, seven months after we met her, despite lower court rulings that dismissed
charges against her because a medical report documented she was tortured into
confessing to a crime.

The report also finds that
women are subjected to threats of, or actual, sexual assault (sometimes in
front of husbands, brothers, and children.) Some detainees reported a lack of adequate protection
for female prisoners from attacks by male prison guards, including those from
adjoining male prisons. Two women
reported that sexual assault by prison guards resulted in pregnancy. Women and
officials reported that the likelihood of a woman being subject to sexual
assault is far higher during arrest and interrogation, prior to a woman’s
confinement in prison.“[W]e expect that they’ve been raped by police on the
way to the prison,” Um Aqil, an employee at a women’s prison
facility told Human Rights Watch.

For example, Fatima Hussein (not her real name), a
journalist accused of involvement in the murder of a parliamentarian’s
brother and of being married to an Al-Qaeda member, described physical and
sexual torture in early 2012 at the hands of one particular interrogator in
Tikrit, Colonel Ghazi. She described Ghazi tying her blindfolded to a column
and electrocuting her with an electric baton, hitting her feet and back with
cable, kicking her, pulling her hair, tying her naked to a column and
extinguishing cigarettes on her body, and later handcuffing her to a bed,
forcing her to give him oral sex, and raping her three times. “There was
blood all over me. He would relax, have a cigarette, and put it out on my buttock,
and then started again,” she said.

Women who spoke with Human Rights Watch, who all explicitly
denied involvement in alleged crimes, also described being pushed towards
confessions by interrogators threatening to hurt loved ones. Fatima described
Ghazi passing her the phone, with her daughter at the end of the line, before
threatening: “I’ll do to your daughter what I did to you.” Israa
Salah, arrested in January 2010 due to alleged involvement in terrorism, was
told her teenage daughter, Afrah, was in solitary confinement in the same
facility and would be raped if Israa did not confess. “They knew
everything about her: how she was dressed, who her friends were, and they
showed me pictures of her,” Israa said. She then signed and fingerprinted
a blank piece of paper.

More than 10 women showed Human Rights Watch scars on their
bodies that appeared to be consistent with the torture they described having
undergone.

Security forces conduct random and mass arrests of women
that amount to collective punishment of women for alleged terrorist activities
by male family members, often their husbands. Authorities have exploited vague
provisions in the Anti-Terrorism Law of 2005 to settle personal or political
scores—detaining, charging, and trying women based on their association
to a particular individual, tribe, or sect. According to statistics provided by
an official from the Prime Minister’s Office, 4,200 women in Interior and
Defense ministry facilities were Sunni and 57 were Shia.

Many women told Human Rights Watch they were forced to sign
or fingerprint “confessions” they were not allowed to, or could not
read, an abuse to which high female illiteracy makes women especially
vulnerable. In nine cases women told Human Rights Watch they were forced to
sign or fingerprint blank pieces of paper.

In almost all of the cases
documented by Human Rights Watch, courts based convictions on coerced
confessions and secret informant testimony. Women—like many Iraqi
men—have little or no access to an adequate defense, either because they
cannot afford one or because lawyers are fearful of taking on politically
sensitive cases. Women are frequently detained for months and even years
without charge before seeing a judge or having a trial, in contravention of
Iraqi laws that prohibit arbitrary arrest and detention and enshrine the right
to access to counsel, and articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on
Criminal and Political Rights (ICCPR), which enshrine detainees’ rights
to be informed of the reasons for their detention, to be charged promptly, and
to be brought promptly before a judge.

In many cases that Human Rights Watch documented, judges and
investigating officers colluded to extract bribes from detainees and their
families to secure their release. In several cases women paid bribes but remained
detained. In others, judges accepted bribes from security forces to issue or
prolong arrest and detention orders, and ignored allegations of abuses by
security officials against female detainees. When Laila Abd al-Rahim (not her
real name), 25, who was accused of killing her husband, told an investigative
judge in Baghdad al-Jadida Court that she had been raped and tortured, she said
the judge told her: “What? Do you want them to pamper you?”

Finally, many women—like men—remain in detention
long after judges have dismissed the charges against them or they have served
their sentences. In February 2013, Deputy Prime Minister al-Shahristani
acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that authorities had held detainees in
prison for months or even years after judges issued orders for their release
because they lacked the necessary Interior Ministry approval to be released.

Human Rights Watch’s visits to two prisons revealed
conditions that failed to meet international standards on women’s
detention, including no facilities for child care for the children who are
frequently incarcerated with their mothers, poor hygiene, and
overcrowding—amounting to what one detainee, Fatima Hussein, described as
“a whole city of women.” Iraqi law allows for children under the
age of four to remain in prisons with their mothers, but women reported that
there have been instances of children remaining in prisons until they are 7-years-old.
A prison employee told Human Rights Watch that in one instance a child who was
incarcerated with his mother on death row remained in the prison for several
weeks after she was executed.

The abusive practices documented in this report violate
Iraqi laws and international standards on arrest and detention. The Iraqi
government claims it informs prisoners about complaint mechanisms housed in the
Justice, Interior, Defense and Human Rights ministries. Most women interviewed
did not know about these grievance mechanisms. Two women who alleged that
security forces raped them in detention said they did not receive forensic
examinations or post-rape care, and that the officers remain on duty.

Factors that discourage women from filing complaints include
lack of legal representation, or mistrust in representation when it is
provided. Fear of retaliation, stigma, and rejection by families and the
community also inhibit women’s ability to report and seek redress for
abuses of their rights in detention. Such concerns are well-founded: the mere
implication that a woman has been sexually abused exposes her to risk of
permanent dislocation and violence from her family, and may harm her economic
and social prospects.

Official Response

Officials—including Deputy
Prime Minister al-Shahristani and the justice and human rights ministers—
have dismissed reports of abuse of women in detention as exceptional cases.
Human Rights Watch’s research, including first-hand interviews and
information provided by other organizations that have researched detention for
years, indicates it is common, perpetrated at all levels of the security
forces, and happens in wide variety of locations, including police stations,
prisons, and military detention facilities.

These same officials have been keen to stress they are
initiating reforms to combat security force abuses, which they blame on
security challenges, lack of capacity among Iraqi institutions, and the legacy
of Saddam Hussein’s time. Iraq is still in
a “transition from dictatorship,” one parliamentarian said.

Officials in the Justice and Interior ministries claim that media
and reports by NGOs of abuses are exaggerations based on detainees’ lies,
abuses that could not be committed against women in Iraqi society. Despite
written requests, the Justice, Defense, and Interior ministries and the Office
of the Prime Minister had at the time of writing not responded to Human Rights
Watch’s request for information about measures that they have taken to
address the multiple problems documented in this report.

Anti-Terrorism Law

Interviews with female detainees, lawyers, and judges indicate
that authorities are detaining at least 100, and perhaps many more, women under
Law No. 13 of 2005—Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism
Law—which mandates the death penalty for “those who commit ...
terrorist acts,” and “all those who enable terrorists to commit
these crimes.” Many women are detained under article 4 of the law for allegedly
“covering up” for their husbands.

Women appear to be disproportionately targeted for their
relationships to male family members whom the government considers suspects,
particularly in terrorism cases. Targeting women as a way to reach male
suspects punishes them for crimes they have not committed, violating their
right to due process of law.

Justice Ministry officials did not respond to Human Rights
Watch requests for disaggregated figures on how many women are detained or
convicted on terrorism charges. Twenty-three out of the twenty-seven women and four
of the seven girls interviewed for this report had been held for allegedly covering
up for male family members. They, their lawyers, and family members said the
women had been charged based on confessions gleaned through threats and
physical abuse, including severe beatings; burns with cigarettes on
women’s breasts, thighs, arms, and legs; the use of electric shock on
women’s hands and feet; and the use of falaqa.

Articles 109 and 213 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allow
arrests and convictions based on secret informant testimony, which may consist
of unsupported allegations. This compounds due process violations, and is a
factor in the ability of security forces and judges to force female detainees
to pay bribes to avoid long periods of detention.

Lack of Accountability

Justice, Interior, and Defense ministry officials could not
provide information regarding any official who had been prosecuted and
convicted of torturing a detainee.

One obstacle to ensuring justice is the enormous danger that
judges face when performing their duties: current and former judges told Human
Rights Watch that government officials and armed groups frequently harass and
threaten judges, who have no protection from attacks. In 2012, armed militants
killed at least eight judges and made assassination attempts on at least ten others.

Numerous other shortcomings in the justice system, such as corruption,
political interference, and legal obstacles contribute to lack of
accountability for abuses against women in detention facilities. For example,
the Office of the General Prosecutor appears to rarely investigate allegations
of torture by law enforcement officers. Human Rights Watch could not identify
any instance in which the Office of the General Prosecutor investigated torture
allegations against law enforcement officials without the victim or family
formally filing a complaint, although officials said that Interior Ministry
regulations require investigative judges to initiate torture complaints.

Lack of transparency also hampers accountability. The
Defense, Interior, and Justice ministries have not made public statistics of
prisoners, nor disaggregated their locations by charge, partly due to the inadequate
record-keeping used to record prisoner intake and releases. Women are detained
in Interior and Defense ministry-controlled facilities even though prolonged
detention in these facilities is illegal, according to Deputy Prime Minister al-Shahristani
and the head of the Interior Ministry’s human rights directorate.

Scarcity of
resources is a real impediment to the ability of the government to train law
enforcement officials, build adequate prison facilities, and implement reforms.
But it does not explain or justify the scale of abuses against detainees by security
and judicial officials, the lack of basic standards of fairness in detention,
interrogation, and trials, or the absence of meaningful accountability.

Next Steps

Problems plaguing the criminal justice system are
massive and the system needs a general overhaul. There are nonetheless immediate
steps the government can take to begin to address the abuses that women suffer
in the criminal justice system.

A full set of recommendations appears at the end of
this report. The necessary changes, both general and specific to women, that
the Iraqi authorities should undertake include:

·Acknowledging
the prevalence of abuses of female detainees and condemning torture and
ill-treatment in pretrial detention; promptly investigating allegations of
torture and ill-treatment; prosecuting guards and interrogators who abuse; and
disallowing coerced confessions.

·Ensuring
that arrests of women comply with the Code of Criminal Procedure, which
requires that defendants have access to a lawyer with adequate time to prepare
an effective defense and to challenge evidence against them.

·Reforming Iraq’s
Anti-Terrorism Law, which provides significantly fewer protections for suspects
and detainees than the Code of Criminal Procedure; investigating credible
allegations that officers and judges routinely use the law to arrest women in
order to harass family members; and releasing men and women held without arrest
warrants—particularly those being held without charge on “suspicion
of terrorism.”

·Amending articles in the Code of
Criminal Procedure to eliminate use of testimony by secret informants, who are
frequently paid; penalizing judges or security officials who use such testimony
as a basis for arrest or conviction; and giving detainees the right to sue if
courts or security officials use such testimony to convict them.

·Ensuring
that detention only occurs in regular police stations and prisons, and
initiating a public outreach campaign to inform Iraqis of their rights during
arrest, detention, and sentencing.

Iraq's future as a society based on rule of law depends on
establishing a credible Iraqi criminal justice system embodying international
standards of fairness and holding accountable officials responsible for serious
crimes such as torture.

The failings of the criminal justice system documented in
this report show that the Prime Minister al-Maliki’s government has so
far failed to eliminate many of the abusive practices that Saddam Hussein institutionalized
and United States-led Coalition Forces continued.

Methodology

This report is based on research conducted by two Human
Rights Watch researchers and a consultant in Baghdad between December 2012 and
March 2013.

We interviewed three women who had been released from prison
in the preceding weeks, and one who was released during our visit as a result
of Human Rights Watch’s intervention with Deputy Prime Minister Hussein
al-Shahristani and the Justice Ministry on her case.

We obtained permission to visit a juvenile facility in
Karrada, Baghdad, where we interviewed 7 girls under 18 detained in the
facility, the warden, and a doctor who said she visits the facility weekly.

We obtained permission to visit prisons for two days in late
February. We interviewed 14 women in detention in Baghdad’s Central
Prison for Women in the Rusafa complex (“Site 4”); 7 women in the
death row facility in central Baghdad (“Shaaba Khamsa”); an
employee at Shaaba Khamsa; and the wardens of both these detention facilities.

Where possible we interviewed women and girl detainees in
private, although in some cases we interviewed girls in groups at their
request. In all cases, we interviewed detainees without prison officials
present. We inspected detention facilities and interviewed prison
administrators and other employees (such as guards, doctors, and childcare
providers).

We interviewed 13 family members of women in detention or who
had been detained previously. We interviewed seven lawyers who represented
female detainees and four representatives of NGOs who had conducted prison
visits; four judges who preside in criminal courts and two former judges; and
two tribal sheikhs who were working on a governmental committee created to
oversee prisoner releases. We also met with academic experts on Iraq’s
security forces and prison system; journalists; and United Nations officials
and diplomatic staff who had visited women’s detention facilities.

We conducted interviews, mainly in Arabic via an Iraqi
translator, at detention and prison facilities, the offices of NGOs, and other
private settings. Interviewers and interpreters were female. Iraqi NGOs,
lawyers, and other detainees assisted us in identifying persons to interview.

Human Rights Watch conducted follow-up telephone interviews with
former detainees, their lawyers and families, and consulted official documents,
including reports on detainee treatment and prison conditions, provided by
officials, detainees and their lawyers and families, and NGOs.

We informed all persons interviewed of the purpose of the
interview, its voluntary nature, and the ways in which the data would be
collected and used. Without exception the detainees, family members, lawyers,
and members of civil society and human rights groups we interviewed requested
their real names not be used for reasons of personal security. Some government
officials also spoke on condition of anonymity. Pseudonyms were selected to disguise
the interviewee’s identity and may not reflect their religious or
regional background.

No interviewee received compensation. We reimbursed two
interviewees for the small costs they incurred to travel to the interview
location.

We also interviewed Iraqi government officials, including a deputy
prime minister, the minister of human rights, and the minister of justice, and
parliamentarians. We collected information from these officials on the
procedures that security forces should follow during detention and
interrogation and to which judges must adhere. We reviewed reports prepared by
several governmental accountability bodies on abuses of detainees and
questioned the relevant officials about known abuses. We requested
interrogation protocols and guidelines, particularly regarding female
detainees, in person and in follow-up written requests, from the Justice and Interior
ministries, but were not provided with these handbooks.

I. Background

Iraq’s History of Endemic Torture

The legacy of abuse inherited from Saddam Hussein’s
rule—torture, the death penalty, and extrajudicial executions—lives
on in the criminal justice system of Iraq today.[1]

In 2004, Human Rights Watch, in its first comprehensive
report on human rights conditions after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s
government, found that Iraqi authorities continued to routinely arrest suspects
arbitrarily, hold them in prolonged pretrial detention without judicial review,
subject them to torture, and detain them in “abysmal conditions in
pretrial detention facilities.”[2] Courts
still accepted coerced confessions as evidence and authorities failed to
investigate and punish officials responsible for violations.

After 2003, US-led Coalition Forces transferred thousands of
Iraqi detainees to Iraqi custody despite knowing that they faced a clear risk
of torture. Leaked military cables indicate that US commanders frequently
failed to follow up on credible evidence that Iraqi forces killed, tortured, and
mistreated their captives. According to the documents, US authorities
investigated some abuse cases, but much of the time they either ignored the
abuse or asked Iraqis to investigate and closed the file.[3] International
police advisers, primarily from the US, “turned a blind eye to these
rampant abuses.”[4]

In some cases, Coalition Forces themselves committed abuses
against prisoners, including female prisoners. Women that US forces detained in
Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 said US soldiers beat and humiliated them and
threatened them with rape, and held them in prolonged solitary confinement.[5]

Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC), and journalists extensively documented extreme cases of torture
and inhuman treatment at locations in Iraq other than Abu Ghraib.[6]
From 2003 to 2006, a special military and CIA task force responsible for
capturing and holding high-level armed combatants at Camp Nama in Baghdad regularly
stripped detainees naked, subjected them to sleep deprivation and extreme cold,
placed them in painful stress positions, humiliated, and beat them.[7]

Former Iraqi detainees and their relatives have filed court
complaints, and the United Kingdom government and the ICRC conducted investigations,
into allegations of the use of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment by
UK forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2007. In a ruling in May 2013, the UK High
Court indicated there were 700-800 such cases of allegations of ill-treatment
by UK forces.[8]

US government and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) policies
have had an enormous impact on criminal justice, police, security, and
counterterrorism institutions and personnel in Iraq. The CPA, under order
number one (“De-Ba'athification of Iraqi Society”), fired top-ranking
Ba'ath Party members from all government positions, resulting in a loss of
institutional knowledge regarding the functioning of the police force and other
government institutions.

During and after its official occupation of Iraq, the US
created institutions that were intended to provide accountability—including
human rights directorates in the security ministries and Iraq’s official
anti-corruption body, the Integrity Commission. But as security deteriorated
and the nascent Iraqi state apparatus became more authoritarian, official
intimidation, threat of arrest, and the example of US forces jailing suspects
indefinitely without charge, hobbled those state watchdogs.[9] CPA
officials, and later US and other embassy officials, were ineffective in promoting
the implementation of legal reforms that would protect Iraqis’ human
rights.[10]

In 2005, Iraq’s parliament, under Prime Minister
Ibrahim al-Jaaferi, passed the Anti-Terrorism Law, which allows security forces
to detain people on broad terrorism charges. The parliament passed the
legislation at a time when US forces were responsible for Iraq’s
security, and the US military, both prior to and following the law’s passage,
regularly detained suspects without formally charging them with a specific
crime.[11]

UN Security Council resolutions 1546, 1637, and 1723
authorized Coalition forces to detain persons “for imperative reasons of
security,” and US military procedure during operations in Iraq held any
person considered a “security risk” could be held indefinitely,
without their case coming before a court.[12] US
practice provided a precedent for Iraqi security forces’ incommunicado
detention of suspects in addition to the wide power granted by the Anti-Terrorism
Law. US detention and mistreatment of women were a “source of particular
anger for average Iraqis and insurgents alike” while the US occupied
Iraq.[13]

The US trained Iraqi police from December 2003 until US troops
withdrew in December 2011. But soon after, the Iraqi government exerted its
control over the judiciary and replaced many police and military commanders
with people loyal to the ruling Dawa party or Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki,
rather than for their professional qualifications.[14]

A report by Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry in May 2013
indicates that deaths in prison due to torture are increasing. The ministry’s
“Annual Report on Conditions in Prisons and Detention Facilities in
2012” documented 117 deaths in prison in 2012, up from 52 in 2011 –of
which 20 deaths in 2012 “appear to have resulted from torture.”[15]

Representatives of NGOs, government officials, judges, and
lawyers expressed their concern to Human Rights Watch that the criminal justice
system encourages torture during interrogations in a range of facilities where
women are detained, including Interior and Defense ministry detention
facilities, and facilities run by forces that answer directly to the prime
minister, including the Counter-Terrorism Service, the 56th
(Baghdad) Brigade, and the 57th Brigade.[16] Lawyers
and judges base convictions mainly on confessions or on secret informant
testimony and seldom on other evidence.

A former high-ranking judge told Human Rights Watch that in
cases over which he presided, and substantiated by anecdotal evidence from judicial
colleagues still active, torture by security forces is rampant.[17]

The June 2013 UNAMI Human Rights Report said that nearly all
detainees UNAMI interviewed alleged they had suffered abuse and mistreatment while
held during investigation in Interior Ministry-run facilities prior to their
transfer to the Justice Ministry.[18]

Women’s
Rights in Iraq

Women’s rights have suffered dramatically in Iraq
since the Gulf War of 1991: as security and stability have eroded, militias
promoting misogynist ideologies have targeted women and girls for assassination
and intimidated them to stay out of public life. Women risk harassment and
abuse from Iraq's virtually all-male police and other security forces,
compounding their frequent victimization at home.[19]
Fathers, brothers, and husbands sometimes kill women for a wide variety of
perceived “honor” transgressions.[20]
Iraqi law protects perpetrators of violence against women: Iraq's penal code
considers “honorable motives” to be a mitigating factor in crimes,
including murder. The code also gives husbands a legal right to discipline
their wives.[21]

A 2011 Human Rights Watch
report found that “[t]he biggest victims [of ongoing insecurity] in Iraq
are young women. They are widowed, trafficked, forced into early marriages,
beaten at home and sexually harassed if they leave the house, which is a new
phenomenon in Iraq.”[22]

The current dire circumstances in which Iraqi women live
mark a dramatic break from the relatively good socioeconomic conditions they formerly
enjoyed. For much of the 20th century, the rights of Iraqi women and girls were
relatively well-protected.[23]
The Iraqi Provisional Constitution of 1970 guaranteed equal rights to women
before the law. A 1976 compulsory education law mandated that both sexes attend
school through the primary level.[24]The literacy gap between males and females began to narrow after
the government passed legislation in 1979 for the eradication of illiteracy.[25] The
government also changed labor and employment and personal status laws, granting
women better workplace opportunities and greater equality in marriage, divorce,
and inheritance, in order to supplant family and tribal loyalty with loyalty to
the government and ruling Ba’ath party.[26]

That changed after Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War,
when Saddam Hussein embraced Islamic and tribal traditions as a political tool
to consolidate his waning power, and reversed many of the positive steps
advancing women's and girls' status in Iraqi society.

The position of women in Iraqi society rapidly deteriorated.[27] Women
and girls suffered from increasing restrictions on their freedom of mobility
and protections under the law. In an attempt to attract support from
conservative and religious groups and tribal leaders, the government introduced
decrees and legislation that negatively impacted women's legal status in the
labor code, criminal justice system, and personal status laws.[28]
Security forces escalated the use of gender-specific abuses, including sexual
violence, against female political activists and relatives of dissidents.[29]

The insecurity
created by the US-led 2003 occupation of Iraq, followed by sectarian strife
that engulfed the country, further eroded women's rights. Human Rights Watch
documented a wave of sexual violence and abductions against women in Baghdad
following the invasion.[30] Women
and girls told Human Rights Watch that insecurity and fear of rape and
abduction kept them in their homes, out of schools, and away from work.
Although assailants kidnapped many men as well, the consequences for women and
girls were worse due to concerns of family “honor.”

For women and girls, the shame associated with such events
was a lasting stigma because of the presumption that abductors had raped or
sexually assaulted the woman or girl during her ordeal, regardless of whether this
had happened. The same assumption was made of women detained by security forces,
particularly after women claimed that militias, insurgents, Iraqi security
forces, multinational forces, and foreign private military contractors raped
them.[31]

II. Illegal Arrests and
Detentions of Women

They called me daughter of a bitch, daughter of a whore.…
They pointed a gun at my head and threatened to rape me and continue the
electricity if I didn’t agree to everything the judge read from his
papers. They told me, ‘We will do whatever you can think of if you
don’t say yes.’

Mass Arrests
and Collective Punishment

Human Rights Watch found that security officials in the Interior
and Defense ministries round up women, especially family members of male
suspects, without an arrest warrant, deny women access to a lawyer, and fail to
bring detained women before an investigative judge according to Iraq’s Code
of Criminal Procedure. At least 15 female detainees, their families, and
lawyers told Human Rights Watch that they were detained as a part of a round-up
of an entire family or village. Security officers conducted warrantless raids
in neighborhoods and detained some residents for several days.[33]

Ten women reported that security forces questioned them not
about their activities, but about their relatives.[34]
Security forces released some of the women without ever charging them, and
charged others with “covering up” for their husbands or other male
family members, effectively punishing them for familial associations rather
than any wrongdoing.[35] A
former judge, who asked not to be identified, said:[36]

If someone is arrested as part of an emergency operation,
no matter how urgent, an investigative judge must still issue an arrest warrant.[37] In
exceptional cases, where there is an explosion, for example, the arresting unit
can collect testimonies at the scene while they await the issuance of arrest
warrants. But what happens in fact is that they arrest them and later have a judge
provide a warrant that justified the arrest.[38]

He added that security forces “often arrest a large
number of people in an area where an incident occurs without an arrest
warrant.”

A lawyer, who asked not to be identified, said that this
practice was especially frequent in arrests of women. “They arrest the women
just to get at one person– their husband, or their brother,” he
said.[39] Another
lawyer who also requested anonymity said:

Individual officers have taken the law into their own hands to arrest
the wife and children to put pressure on the husband, but the wife is not
responsible.[40]…If
a man is arrested and won’t confess, they bring his wife in.

Arrests of women because of their relationships to suspects,
without any evidence that they have committed a crime, amount to collective
punishment, and violate international human rights law’s guarantee of the
rights to liberty of person and the right to a fair trial.[41] These
prohibit arbitrary detention and require that detention only be in accordance
with clear domestic law, that detainees be informed immediately of the reason
for their detention and are promptly brought before a judge and charged with a
criminal offense. Such arrests also violate Iraqi laws protecting these rights,
including provisions of Iraq’s Constitution and Code of Criminal
Procedure.[42]

On November 3, 2012, federal police invaded 11 homes in the
town of al-Tajji, 20 kilometers north of Baghdad, and detained 11 women and 29
children overnight in their homes. The lawyer representing the women told Human
Rights Watch that people were detained from every house in the village.[43]

After detaining 12 of the
women and girls, aged 11 to 60, for several hours in their homes, police took
them to a police station where they held them without charge for four days.[44] Throughout their detention, police put plastic
bags over each of their heads until they began to suffocate, and electrocuted and
beat some of them, according to the women’s accounts.

Majida Obeidi, 22, detained as part of the Tajji operation, told
Human Rights Watch that at around midnight on November 3, a large number of
security forces raided the village and invaded the house where she was staying
with her four young children and her husband’s 12-year-old second wife.[45]
Some wore the uniform of the National Guard, others were Special Forces, and
some wore civilian clothes, she said.

I think there were about 10 or 15 soldiers. Zahra [the
second wife] and I were alone in the house with my children. They blew open the
doors and streamed in. They demanded to know where my husband was, but they
didn’t know his name, and they asked where we kept the weapons. They
looked for the weapons under the floor and ripped bricks off the house but they
didn’t find anything.

They held them overnight
in her home, and then took Majida and her children, along with 11 other women
and 25 of their children, to the federal police brigade headquarters in the
Kadhimeyya compound, also known as Camp Justice, in Baghdad. Police held them
there for four days, and then transferred them to the al-Shaaba al-Khamsa
detention facility in the same compound. Police released the children after three
days, but detained 12 of the women for a month before bringing them before an
investigative judge. Majida said the
officers repeatedly questioned her about her husband, and then accused her of
being a terrorist.

Why don’t you show us the bodies of the Shia
you slaughtered—where have you hidden them?” They said horrible
things to me…. I don’t want to repeat them. They called me daughter
of a bitch, daughter of a whore.

The judge charged the women with terrorism under article 4
of the Anti-Terrorism Law for “covering up” for their husbands.

A high-level government official confirmed the details of
the women’s detention and added that according to the brother of one woman,
a colonel in Kadhimeyya offered to release his sister if he paid him US$6,500.[46]The statements of dozens of officials, lawyers, detainees, and
their families indicate that bribery of this nature is common. The brother
paid, but the colonel did not release his sister.

After tribes in Anbar and Baghdad began campaigns calling
for the women to be released, an investigative judge and military intelligence general
ordered that 12 of the women be detained “on suspicion of terrorism.”
A senior official told Human Rights Watch that the judge and general issued
arrest warrants based on “fabricated” charges for all of the women
and girls “in order to protect [the involved officers and judge].”[47] An
11-year-old girl was charged with covering up terrorist acts and accused of
taking documents from a locker and hiding them in her clothes, the official said.

The Interior Ministry’s human rights director, who
asked to be identified as “General Muhammad,” denied that the women
were illegally arrested. When Human Rights Watch questioned General Muhammad
about Majida Obeidi’s allegations that 8th Brigade
officers beat and electrocuted her and several other women while holding them
incommunicado, he flatly denied the allegations.[48]

Human Rights Watch spoke with two girls, aged 11 and 12, who
were arrested in the Tajji operation, in the Karrada juvenile detention
facility in Baghdad. At the time of the interview they had been detained for 10
days. The girls confirmed that federal police broke into their homes at around
the same time, then held them for one-and-a-half months in Kadhimeyya.[49]
Alia Tamimi, 12, said she was in her home with her mother, her three older
sisters, and her brother and his wife when federal police entered.

They scared us when they came in. They kicked and broke
into the door, shouting and screaming at us, late at night. Police stayed with
us in the house for 12 hours.[50]

The girls’ lawyer told Human Rights Watch the girls
were being held on suspicion of terrorism, which carries a penalty of death,
under article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law. When Human Rights Watch interviewed
them, they said they were not aware of the charges on which they were being
held, and that they had not seen a lawyer or their parents. They said that security
officers had not ill-treated them.

Dozens of women detainees arrested since the end of 2012
told Human Rights Watch that security forces arrested them without showing an
arrest warrant, interrogated them about male family members without accusing
the women of any crime, and demanded bribes for their release. Several women at
the Site 4 detention facility told Human Rights Watch that they were detained
“on behalf of” a husband, brother, or other male relative. Some
women remained in detention after the arrests of their male relatives, either
because they were then charged with covering up for their relative or with
having committed a crime for which they were not originally charged.

Nadia Ali Abdullah

Security forces arrested Nadia Ali Abdullah, 45, and her six
children and beat Nadia during a raid on her home in the Ghazaleyya
neighborhood of west Baghdad on March 28, 2012, when they were looking for her
brother-in-law. Judges have repeatedly renewed Nadia’s detention for
further interrogation on “suspicion of terrorism,” but she has
never been charged or tried. At the time of writing, she remained in detention
at the Site 4 facility, Baghdad’s central prison for women that the
Justice Ministry administers, which is where Human Rights Watch spoke with her
on February 28, 2013.

Nadia, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006, told
Human Rights Watch that security officials, whom she could not identify but
believed to be joint army and police forces, raided her home shortly after the
noon prayer, while she was preparing lunch for herself and her children.[51]
The raid occurred shortly after a suicide bomb attack in the neighborhood, she
said, and in the context of a series of mass arrests in the area at the time by
police and army, ahead of the Arab League Summit that was held in Baghdad in
April 2012.

As soon as I opened the door they started beating us up and
shouting at us, holding out an ID and asking me who was pictured in the ID. I
didn’t know who it was. The beatings lasted for about a half an hour.
They beat us so hard that finally my youngest daughter begged them to stop
beating me, telling them, “Stop, she has cancer and you’ll kill
her.” They even beat Sarah, my 17-year-old daughter, who is mentally
disabled. They turned the place upside down, searching the house and destroying
everything.

Nadia said that security forces then took her and her
children to her brother-in-law Mahmud Muntathar’s home, where they
detained his sister, Lama Muhammad Abdullah, 51; his wife, Khadija Najim Abdullah,
37; his sister-in-law, Shukreya Najim Abdullah, 68, along with around 15
children, mostly between the ages of 6 and 10. None of them had been detained
before, “even when the Americans were here,” Nadia said. That
night, security forces took them to al-Ghazaleyya police station, where they
detained them for six days before releasing the children.

Security forces’ and judges’ questions to her
focused on the identity of a man whom she says she does not know but whom she
said she saw in the area at the time of the bombing, and also on her
brother-in-law Mahmud, 38, who was arrested the same day and who police
intelligence forces have detained at the Muthanna Airport ever since without
allowing him to see a lawyer, she said.

They interrogated me over and over about the man I saw
outside my house, but I told them I knew nothing about him, and about my
brother-in-law. On the fourth day we were able to see a lawyer and on the sixth
day they took us to the interrogation judge. He also asked me if I knew
anything about the man outside our house and I said, ‘No.’ Then I
was transferred here [to Site 4], along with the other [three] women with me.
The investigative judge released them after four weeks, but I’m still
here.

The authorities never presented Nadia with evidence of her
involvement in any crime and she did not confess, she said, but interrogation
judges repeatedly issued orders prolonging her detention “for
interrogation.” Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure allows
investigative judges to renew detention orders for 15 days at a time,
indefinitely.[52]
She never saw an arrest warrant and did not have a lawyer during her initial
presentation to the interrogation judge, she said. Nadia claims investigators
found no evidence linking her, her brother-in-law, or his family to the suicide
bomb attack.

On October 15, 2012, Nadia said she was presented to
Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court in Rusafa, popularly known as the Clock
Court. “The judge asked me all the same questions about my
brother-in-law,” and transferred her case from the federal police to the
intelligence police, she said. Nadia said that on February 13, 2013, the
intelligence police from Muthanna summoned her and wrote down her
“case” for the fourth time:

No one told my lawyer.
Afterward they took me back to the Clock Court. The judge and a court lawyer
were there. The judge asked me all the same questions about my brother-in-law
as before, and I gave him all of the same answers: I told him what I said before,
that I have no idea what happened and that my brother-in-law doesn’t have
links with anyone. The judge asked me if I had changed my testimony since the
previous times I went before the judge. When I told him no, he asked me, “Why
are you still here?” Then the judge told the lawyer to file a request for
my release because they had no evidence to keep me. I think the lawyer filed
this request but I don’t know.

Sundus Abd al-Razzaq and Ibtihal Ahmad

On September 1, 2012, at about 7 p.m., some 20 members of
the federal police’s 8th Brigade
arrested Sundus Abd al-Razzaq, 34, and her mother, Ibtihal Ahmad, 70, during a raid
on their home in the Ghazaleyya neighborhood of west Baghdad.

According to the women, security forces broke into their
home, beat them, questioned them about Sundus’s husband, Khalid, and held
them both, along with 13 other women from the neighborhood and Sundus’s 3
young children in their home for several hours.

Sundus told Human Rights Watch,

They put us together in the kitchen and kept us waiting
there for my husband to arrive, but he never came. They called us bitches and
horrible names … they never showed us an arrest warrant. There
hadn’t been any attacks in the area recently so I don’t know why
they held us.[53]

After arresting Sundus and Ibtihal, security forces took the
two women and their children to the nearby home of Ibtihal’s daughter-in-law,
Um Mariam, 36, in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood. Um Mariam told Human
Rights Watch that security forces forcibly entered her home at around 2 a.m.

They broke into my house and searched it. My children were
in the house, all six of them, five girls and a boy. They couldn’t sleep
for days afterward. They didn’t show me any arrest warrant. The whole
time they asked me about Ibtihal, my mother-in-law, and I couldn’t
understand why because she is 70, [and about] Sundus’s husband.[54]

Police then transferred all three women to an Interior Ministry-run
detention facility in Baghdad’s al-Saha neighborhood, where they
separated them from each other and from their children, they said. Police questioned
Um Mariam for an hour-and-a-half before releasing her without charge. She told
Human Rights Watch:

The man asking me questions slapped me across the face
hard. They wouldn’t tell me why they had brought me there, just that they
wanted to know about Ibtihal and about Sundus’s husband. After asking me
questions about them for an hour-and-a-half, someone who seemed to be the
director came in and told the interrogators to stop, that I have six fatherless
children and to let me go.

Sundus said that her interrogators’ questions focused
on her husband, Muhammad, not her. After separating the women and children in
the federal police detention facility at al-Saha, interrogators beat and
electrocuted her and demanded she tell them about Khalid, repeatedly asking, “‘What
does he do?” And when I said, ‘I don’t know what to tell you.
Do you want me to lie?,’ they said, ‘Yes, say it, even if
it’s a lie!’” Sundus said they suspected Khalid of “belonging
to a terrorist organization.”

The authorities held Sundus and Ibtihal for 40 days in the 8th
Brigade headquarters in Ghazaleyya. Sundus and Ibtihal said that security
forces there beat and tortured them daily for the first five days of their
detention. Sundus said:

They took us with the children. For the first half-hour
they held us in the same room. Then they separated us and the torture started.
The first day they tortured me all night, through until the morning. I was
bleeding on the floor. I couldn’t breastfeed my baby. They used
electricity on me the first four or five days, after that they mostly just beat
me…. My shoulders are still damaged and I can’t pray.

Ibtihal said that four men at the8th Brigade headquarters interrogated her about Khalid.

I told them I only know he works as a laborer. They beat me
up and electrocuted me during two days, asking me over and over where he works
and what he does. When I didn’t know the answers they handcuffed my hands
behind my back, blindfolded me and beat and kicked me, calling me bad names. They
would do this two or three times a day, about a half-an-hour each time, for three
days. They kept me in the guard’s room, and when they wanted to
interrogate me they called for me…. After 17, maybe 20 days they brought
me to a judge. They pointed a gun at my head and threatened to rape me and
continue to the electricity if I didn’t agree to everything the judge
read from his papers. They told me, “We will do whatever you can think of
if you don’t say ‘Yes.’”

Sundus confirmed that security forces did not take her and her
mother to an investigative judge until 20 days after their arrest. She had no
lawyer during the judicial hearing where she confessed to having an explosive
belt. Security forces then continued to detain her, her mother and her children
for about another 20 days before transferring them to Site 4, Baghdad’s
central prison for women.

Salma Abd al-Razzaq, Sundus’s sister, said that security
forces held Sundus’s 6-year-old and 4-year-old sons and 5-month-old girl
with Sundus for the first six days in the 8th Brigade headquarters.[55]Salma said that after the children were released to her care, the
six-year-old boy told her about watching interrogators torture his mother:

He told me, “They blindfold her and tied and hands
and legs together. She started to turn around and around and shake from the
electricity.” He said that he could hear her saying to the guards, the
interrogators, “I am like your sister or mother. Why are you torturing
me?” Then they would beat her harder and say, “You are my enemy.”

Salma said that Sundus’s infant daughter was extremely
dehydrated when security forces released her. “When we took her to the
doctor, [he was] horrified, asking ‘Where has this child
been?’” she said. She added:

By the time they were transferred [to Site 4], Sundus’s
breast milk had dried up, because of the torture and because she was so
dehydrated. I brought her children to visit her in Site 4. The moment they saw
the security officers, they urinated on themselves from fear.

Warrantless Arrests and Arbitrary Detentions

Most of the women Human Rights Watch interviewed said that security
forces arrested them without arrest warrants and did not bring them before an
investigative judge within the 24 hours required by Iraq’s Code of
Criminal Procedure. These cases are not limited to mass arrests. Human Rights
Watch documented judges colluding with security forces to provide warrants
after the time required by the code.[56]
Lawyers, judges, and activists told Human Rights Watch that in highly-charged
political cases, security officers dispose with procedure altogether.[57] Women
are detained outside the purview of the Justice Ministry for prolonged periods,
from weeks to months at a time, which a deputy prime minister and justice
minister told Human Rights Watch is illegal.[58]

Souad Ahmad Abd al-Rahman

Security forces arrested Souad Ahmad Abd al-Rahman, 40,
along with her husband, Muhammad, 44, and their handicapped 14-year-old
daughter, Safia, and 10-year-old son, Muhammad, from their car on September 5,
2012 when they were en route to a hospital for their daughter’s routine
medical treatment.

Souad Abd al-Rahman’s mother-in-law, Khadija Mitaab Karim,
69, from Baghdad’s al-Firat neighborhood, told Human Rights Watch that an
hour after security forces took her son and daughter-in-law and their children,
security forces wearing green camouflaged uniforms and red berets came to her
house and arrested another of her sons, Ahmad, 39, and her 17-year-old
grandson.[59]
“I saw them take them out blindfolded,” she said. “I kept
asking them what was going on, but they just said, ‘Don’t worry,
we’ll return them shortly.’” At no point did anyone show her
an arrest warrant or explain the reason for the arrests, she said. Khadija
Karim waited fruitlessly for a month to hear from her detained relatives, and
then began to search for them in Baghdad’s detention facilities. “I
went to the government’s places: Bab al-Sheikh police station, Abu
Ghraib, Tajji, Tasfirat, the [Muthanna] airport [prison]… but everyone
told me they weren’t there,” she said.

After another month, Khadija went to the forensic examiner
at the medical hospital in Bab al-Muthanna. She saw an image of her son Muhammad’s
body on one of three screens where the hospital projects images of unidentified
bodies that have been found in Baghdad. “They told me they found his body
on the street in front of Bab al-Sheikh police station,” Khadija said.

One month after finding her son’s body, Khadija was
able to locate her daughter-in-law and grandchildren: police forces had detained
them in the Qanaa General Security office, in Baghdad’s Baladiyyet
neighborhood, for three months. Interior Ministry forces released her
grandchildren into her care. Khadija said that her granddaughter Safia, who is
paralyzed, told her that “when the human rights groups would come to the
prison, they would take us and hide us in the bathrooms.” Muhammad, Khadija’s
grandson, told her that when security forces arrested him with his parents,
they held his head next to a car tire and threatened run him over if he
didn’t tell them “where they hid the weapons.” Souad Abd
al-Rahman remained in Site 4 at the time of writing, and has not been convicted
of any crime.

Khadija said that Souad is “poor and illiterate”
and does not have a lawyer. Khadija visited Souad once in Site 4. Souad told
her how security forces took her, her husband, and two children from their car,
handcuffed them, and presented them papers to sign, under threat. “She
told me they beat her and told her that if she didn’t sign the papers
they gave her they would take off her clothes, so she signed,” said Khadija.
“She told me that they took her before an investigative judge, who just
asked her about her husband. She didn’t know at the time that he was
already dead.”

Khadija said that all of her family members were arrested
solely on the basis of a secret informant’s testimony. Khadija has
submitted complaints to the parliamentary committees on human rights, security,
and defense, she said, but the family did not have a lawyer and she does not
know the results, if any, of the complaints. “We don’t trust
[lawyers] and anyway have no money to give them,” she said.
“I’m old and sick and my family is all I have. I just want them
back.”

Rasha al-Hussein

On January 1, 2012, security forces arrested Rasha
al-Hussein, an employee in former Vice-President Tariq Hashimi’s media
center, from her parents’ home. Security forces did not have an arrest
warrant and told her family that she was being taken for questioning.

According to a report prepared by the parliamentary Human
Rights Committee, a copy of which the committee gave to Human Rights Watch, Rasha
al-Hussein was likely initially detained in the Defense Ministry-controlled
Muthanna Airport Prison, but prison and other authorities did not give her
family any information about her whereabouts for over four months.

Security forces have arrested an unknown number of other
members of Hashimi’s security and office staff, including at least one
other woman, since December 2011. They are currently in custody in undisclosed
locations, according to a local human rights organization which is working with
the detainees and requested anonymity. Hashimi told Human Rights Watch in March
2012 that he had made “repeated requests to the government to find out
where they are being held, but they have not responded.” Rasha al-Hussein’s
whereabouts are currently unknown.

Amal Zaidi

Amal Zaidi, 55, told Human Rights Watch that Iraqi Special
Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) forces arrested her from her home in Baaquba, 30
miles northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, on December 29, 2011, when she
was at home with her daughter-in-law and five grandchildren.[60] Amal
said that SWAT forces arrived in seven or eight vehicles, stormed and searched
her house, and asked for her by name, but did not show her an arrest warrant.
SWAT officers held her for two days in a detention facility in Baaquba, she
said, then took her to a police station in Bohri’, where they held her
for another 13 days before presenting her to an investigative judge.

The judge ordered Amal’sdetention
on the basis of officers’ allegations that her SIM card, which she said
she had lost, was used in the commission of a kidnapping. She was convicted of
terrorism on the sole basis of the officers’ allegations about the SIM
card, 11 months after her initial detention, in a single-session trial in the
Qasr al-Adala court, she said.

[The judge] asked me
about my SIM card and why I didn’t report losing it, and accused me of
giving it to someone else. That person used it to kidnap someone, he said. They
brought a lawyer into the room but I never spoke to him.

Amal said a different lawyer visited her in Site 4 in November
and told her officers would re-interrogate her, but they never did.

Corruption
and Unlawful Prolonged Detention

In addition to conducting arrests without warrants and
holding detainees for long periods without charge, authorities have detained women
long after they have been issued a judicial order for release, whether on bail,
because they have been found innocent, or because they have completed their
sentences.[61]

Corruption contributes to such unlawful detention practices,
according to lawyers, detainees and government officials. “Corruption in
the security forces and judiciary is the main reason people languish in
prison,” said one high-ranking government official.[62]

[One] major problem is
administrative delays. The second major problem is corruption. People have to
pay to get out. So if your file is at the bottom of the pile, you pay money and
it gets placed on top. This means that if you don’t have money and you
don’t pay, your file keeps moving toward the bottom. Just because you
have a judicial release order doesn’t mean you’ll get out.[63]

Articles 115 and 128 of Iraq’s Code of Criminal
Procedure allow a judge to order the release of a suspect on bail, or of a
person determined not guilty, “if he is not being held for another offense”
or “as long as there is no other legal reason for his detention.”[64]
Citing these provisions, detention facilities will not honor a judicial release
order until the Interior Ministry assures the prison or detention facility the
detainee is not wanted for another crime, referred to as the waiting period procedure
(fitrat ‘aadem matlubeya).

Officials and detainees
alike told Human Rights Watch that the waiting period procedure is the source
of much of the corruption between lawyers, security forces, and judicial
officers. Eighteen female detainees told Human Rights Watch that security and
judicial officers manipulated this procedure to extract bribes from detainees
and their family members to secure their release, violating detainees’
right to be free from arbitrary detention.

Sabha Baker Abbas, 58, is one of numerous women who told
Human Rights Watch that police demanded money for her release. She said police forces
from the Alweya police station raided her home in Karrada at 9 a.m. on
September 23, 2012, where she was with her two sons, 12 and 14, and arrested
her. Sabha told Human Rights Watch that police forces had previously ordered
her to vacate the house because the owner, her landlord, was outside Iraq and wanted
to take over the house.[65]

She said police held her in the Alweya police station for
five days and demanded $6,000 for her release and, when she could not pay,
transferred her to the Site 4 detention facility.

When
they first held me, there was no case against me—they didn’t accuse
me of any crime. An officer named Hayder in Alweya police station demanded
$6,000 from me and said they wouldn’t let me go if I didn’t pay.[66]

Sabha said she did not see an investigative judge until two
months after she had been in prison. When she was taken to an investigative
judge, authorities did not admit her to the courtroom. When security officers
left the courtroom, they informed her that she had been charged with
prostitution—the first time, she said, she learned of the charges against
her.

Sabha said that she was
originally charged based on secret informant testimony, but that the court
later rejected that testimony, and she was now detained without charge, with
her release pending the completion of the Interior Ministry’s waiting
period procedures. “If you talk to a lot of detainees,” she said,
“you will find they are stuck here for the same reason.”

Iraqi Law Prohibiting
Arbitrary Arrest and Detention

Code of Criminal Procedure, Law No. 23 of 1971

Women’s statements to Human Rights Watch indicate that
security forces regularly violate Iraqi laws, which prohibit arbitrary arrest
and detention and enshrine the right to access to counsel, as well as articles
9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Criminal and Political Rights, which
enshrine detainees’ rights to be informed of the reasons for their
detention, to be charged promptly, and to be brought promptly before a judge.[67]

Iraqi security forces arrest women without producing a
judicial warrant and without informing the arrested person of the suspicions
against them in breach of Iraqi law. Article 92 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure requires that a person may be arrested only on the basis of a
judicial warrant, other than in exceptional circumstances, and must be informed
of the reason for arrest and of any charges against them.[68]
The Interior Ministry spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that these
“exceptional circumstances” include witnessing a crime or terrorist
attack, in which case security forces may detain a witness but must obtain a
judicial order for their detention within 24 hours.[69]

Article 123 of Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure
requires that authorities bring detainees before an investigating judge within
24 hours of their arrest. Of the 25 women Human Rights Watch interviewed in
detention, only one was brought to an investigating judge within 24 hours of
her arrest. Article 322 of Iraq’s Penal Code provides a punishment of
imprisonment for “[a]ny public official or agent who arrests, imprisons
or detains a person in circumstances other than those stipulated by law.”[70] Articles
51-57 of the Code of Criminal Procedure require the investigating judge or
investigators acting under his supervision to conduct the initial investigation
and to gather evidence, interviewing witnesses and suspects (articles 58-68),
and determining whether an arrested detainee should be released or referred for
trial.

The Code of Criminal Procedure prescribes the conditions that
must be met in order to extend pretrial detention. These include judicial
review of detention every 15 days. Article 109 of the code, however, provides
that the pretrial detention of a person accused of an offense punishable by
death “may be extended for as long as necessary for the investigation to
proceed or until the examining judge or criminal court issues a decision on the
case on the completion of the preliminary or judicial investigation or
trial.” Any pretrial detention beyond six months is permissible only if
the relevant court grants an “appropriate extension.”

The Code of Criminal Procedure and Iraq’s constitution
also enshrine a detainee’s right to counsel.[71] The
former, adopted in 2005, states in article 19 (4): “The right to a
defense shall be sacred and guaranteed in all phases of investigation and
trial.” Article 123 of the Code of Criminal Procedure entitles an
arrested person to be represented by a legal counsel when being questioned
during the pretrial period, and to have a court-appointed legal counsel free of
charge if he or she cannot afford legal counsel of their choosing. Detaining
authorities must also inform detainees of these rights before questioning them.

As the accounts above illustrate, Iraqi security forces arrest
and detain women for long periods without a warrant, and deny detainees access
to lawyers. Investigative judges, who are responsible for issuing search and
arrest warrants and orders prolonging suspects’ detention, often collaborate
with security officers to keep women detained on specious “suspicion of
terrorism” charges, then demand bribes to secure release from custody,
according to detainees and their families.

Lawyers and activists confirmed women’s allegations
that security forces regularly conduct arrest “sweeps,” in which
security forces detain large numbers of people in a home or an entire
neighborhood on suspicion of terrorism. “The big problem in Iraq is the
detainees and convicts held in prison due to terrorism charges,” said a
parliamentarian and former judge who is a member of one of the committees
Maliki appointed to negotiate with protesters demanding improvements in the
criminal justice system.[72]

So many people are held and arrested when an explosion
occurs in a particular neighborhood … then people are sentenced based on
article 4 according to nothing more than secret informant testimony.[73]

Lawyers and activists also confirmed to Human Rights Watch
that women are frequently detained on suspicion of terrorism without the
authorities producing any evidence of their wrongdoing, frequently based on
suspicion of their male relatives. Iraqi law provides that women cannot be
compelled to testify against their husbands.[74] However,
women said that they had been detained for al-tasattur, or covering up
for their husbands, under article 4(2) of Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism Law,
which provides penalties for “Anyone who intentionally covers up any
terrorist act or harbors a terrorist with the purpose of concealment.”[75]

The Anti-Terrorism Law, Law no. 13 of 2005

Despite the Penal Code provisions protecting suspects’
right to be free of arbitrary arrest and detention and right to a fair trial,
Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism Law is frequently used to circumvent these
protections.

The breadth of article 4 (“Penalties”), which
states that “Anyone who committed, as a main perpetrator or a
participant, any of the terrorist acts stated in the second and third articles
of this law, shall be sentenced to death,” equally penalizes any
“person who incites, plans, finances, or assists terrorists to commit the
crimes stated in this law,” and provides life imprisonment for “[a]nyone
who intentionally covers up any terrorist act or harbors a terrorist with the
purpose of concealment,” facilitates arrests and detentions for a wide
variety of otherwise non-criminal activities.[76]

A lawyer who represents 15 women who are detained for
suspicion of terrorism without being officially charged described several of
his cases to Human Rights Watch. In one typical case, security forces detained
18-year-old Noha at the 5th Brigade headquarters for four months because they
could not locate her husband, whom she had married one month prior to her
arrest.[77]
She was eight months pregnant when Human Rights Watch interviewed her lawyer,
and due to deliver her baby in prison. The lawyer explained:

The judicial system uses article 4 against women in the
following way: Security officers arrest a woman, and ask her who her husband
works with. If she answers, “Al-Qaeda,” she will be temporarily
released. Then they go after the husband, asking who he works with and who his
superiors are. He will answer, “Sami and Latif.” The police then go
back to the woman and say, ”Why didn’t you tell us about the
others?” and charge her with al-tasattur and sentence her to life
imprisonment. I have seen more than 20 such cases.[78]

Three other lawyers confirmed that the majority of women
charged under article 4 are convicted on the basis of “covering up”
for their husbands or for foreign visitors.[79]

III. Torture and Sexual Abuse in Interrogations

I heard three voices. At first they didn’t ask me
anything. One of them immediately beat me on my face, breaking my tooth, and I
fainted. They beat the hell out of me, and when I fainted again they took me to
solitary confinement. I heard one of them say, ‘Take her away.
We’ll enjoy ourselves with her tonight.’

Human Rights Watch found that security forces of the Interior
and Defense ministries, and forces that operate unofficial detention
facilities, tortured women in their custody. Human Rights Watch heard credible
accounts of torture from women in prison, recently released detainees, and
lawyers and families of detainees. More than 10 women showed Human Rights Watch
scars on their bodies that appeared to be consistent with the torture they
described having undergone.

Two women said that an Interior Ministry officer raped them
in custody, and another detainee’s family said that a high-ranking police
officer raped their daughter while she was detained in police custody, with her
mother detained in the adjoining room.

Human Rights Watch interviewed a prisoner on death row who
confirmed that a police officer had raped her in custody, but requested that
she not be identified because of her fear of stigma.[81]

Nearly all of the 25 women Human Rights Watch interviewed in
detention said that security forces had verbally and physically abused them during
arrest and interrogation in facilities run by the Interior and Defense
ministries or in irregular places of detention, such as their homes or
unofficial facilities, almost always prior to their admittance to a facility
administered by the Justice Ministry.

“Most women [who are raped] are raped in police
departments, not prisons,” said Um Aqil,
an employee at a women’s prison facility.[82]
“But most wouldn’t say so, because of the shame.” Um Aqil said that the death row facility required
that all women be given a pregnancy test prior to her confinement in the
facility, “because we expect that they’ve been raped by police on
the way to the prison,” she said.

The warden at Site 4, Baghdad’s Central Prison for
Women, said that she refused to admit women who had not seen doctors prior to
their imprisonment there out of concern that the prison administration could be
blamed for abuses that Interior or Defense ministry officers committed. The
warden said she physically “inspected the women” herself, but some
detainees said prison officials took them for a forensic examination at
government hospitals only after they were sent to the prison. According to several
prisoners, doctors there perform only cursory medical exams. Two women said
they only received a pregnancy test.[83]
One said that these forensic exams had become more routine in order to document
sexual abuse and torture after the issue became highly politicized in late
2012.[84]

Fatima Hussein

On February 29, 2012, Fatima Hussein, a journalist, went to
the army’s5th Brigade headquarters in Baghdad’s Saidiya neighborhood
to help release an acquaintance named Saddam who had called to say that he was
being held there. When she arrived, an intelligence officer, Lieutenant Muhammad,
told her that police in Tikrit had issued an arrest warrant for her for alleged
involvement in the murder of a parliamentarian’s brother, she said.

She later learned the warrant was issued based on testimony
by a secret informant. Fatima, 43, told Human Rights Watch that she believed
her arrest was related to her journalistic work documenting abuses of detainees
in a prison in Tikrit. She had sent documentation of these abuses to the Prime Minister’s
Office shortly before her arrest.

The day after her arrest, security forces transferred Fatima
to Tikrit and detained her in the Directorate for Major Crimes, housed in one
of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, until March 7. During that week, the
head of the directorate, a man she identified as Colonel Ghazi, accused her of
murdering the brother of Nahida al-Deini, a member of parliament; participating
in an attack on the Tikrit provincial council building; and being married to an
Al-Qaeda member, she said. Security forces never presented her with evidence of
her alleged involvement in any of the crimes.

When I got to Tikrit, Colonel Ghazi initially accused me of
participating in Deini’s murder. When I denied it, he blindfolded me and
took me to an interrogation cell. Saddam was there, and I learned he was the
secret informant. But they didn’t interrogate me about the murder. Ghazi
and Saddam accused me of helping to blow up the Tikrit provincial council
building.… When I insisted that I am not guilty, he tied me up to a
column. Then they started using electricity on me. I was blindfolded but it
felt like an electric baton. Every time they used it my head hit the column.
They electrocuted me seven times, on my upper and lower thighs and my chest. I
lost consciousness for a bit, and when I woke up—it felt like they
splashed cold water on me—I said “Okay, I’ll confess.”

After that, she said, Colonel
Ghazi removed her blindfold, gave her a blank piece of paper and ordered her to
sign. Fatima, worried because the paper was blank, asked him whether he was
going to add other charges against her. She said he became angry and tied her
up again.

Then Ghazi kicked the chair I was sitting on. I fell on the
ground, and he said to his bodyguards—there were about six of them—“Bring
out the falaqa.” They [brought] a piece of wood and tied [my] feet
to it, and hit them with cables that have high-voltage wire in it. They beat me
seven or eight times, so many times, on my feet, and then they stood me up and
said, “Yalla, run!” They would hit my back with the cable to
get me to run faster.

Fatima said that Colonel Ghazi tied her, standing, to the
column for two days. She was barely clothed and was not permitted to go to the
bathroom, she said. “When they finally untied me, I collapsed,” she
said. Officers took her back to Colonel Ghazi and she still refused to confess.
He repeatedly kicked her in the face, she said.

I got very dizzy and couldn’t see anything around me
and I started to feel like people were kicking me from all over—in fact
it was just him, kicking me everywhere. Every time I tried to resist him, he
would pull my hair up and hit me in the face. There were six men in the room
watching. They broke my teeth and my nose and they split my eyebrow and my
wrist [she displayed these injuries to a Human Rights Watch researcher]. Then
Ghazi ordered them to undress me. They undressed me and tied me back up to the
column and he started to put the cigarettes out on my body while [the other
officers] watched. He grabbed my breast and squeezed it and started putting the
cigarettes out on my breasts, and thighs. He opened up my legs and put out the
cigarettes on me. He put out cigarettes on my arms and hand. The whole time me
was telling me, “Bitch, whore, slut, mother of cocks, you’re a
journalist that would fuck higher people.” He never asked me anything,
just told me to sign, and when I refused he insulted me more.

After that, she said, the officers who had watched Ghazi
beating her brought an abaya (a traditional loose woman’s over-garment)
and took her back into Ghazi’s office. There he accused her of being
married to an Al-Qaeda member, but Fatima refused to confess.

He told the bodyguards to drag me to another room, where I
saw a mattress, a bed, a fridge, and a locker with uniforms. Then I got scared…
I realized that they intended to do something sexual to me. They put me on the
mattress, and removed my abaya. Ghazi grabbed me by the hair, pulled me
up, and threw me back on the bed. He ordered a soldier to bring the handcuffs….
I was trying to cover my vagina with my hands. He took my arms away from
protecting myself and tied me to the bed with handcuffs. He brought four
handcuffs, one for each hand and foot—I was on my stomach—and they
pulled my legs back and handcuffed my legs to the bed. He ordered everyone out
of the room. Then he took off his clothes. He pulled my head back by my hair
and would use his penis on my cheeks and face to push me to give him oral sex.
I cried and screamed and he pulled my head back and then shoved it back into
the mattress to choke me. He brought a white trash bag and put it around my
head so I couldn’t breathe. I was choking and shaking and he took it off
right when I felt I was about to die. I begged, “Please, for the sake of
Allah, the sake of Muhammad, I will sign whatever you want.” And he said,
“No, this time I don’t want you to sign.” So he came from the
back. He raped me three times…. I started bleeding from the violence of
it. There was blood all over me. He would relax, have a cigarette, and put it
out on my buttock, and then started again. [T]he rape session lasted a long
time; I know because when he took me back to the column I heard the morning azzan
[call to prayer].

Fatima said that officers tied her to a column that day and
night. The next day, she said, a TV crew who said they were from the
state-owned Iraqiya channel came to the prison to film her confessing to
terrorist acts. When she asked Colonel Ghazi what she was supposed to say in
front of the camera, he gave her four pages of testimony and ordered her to
memorize it in the next half-hour.

I said I can’t, it’s too much. He said, “Okay,
there is someone on the phone who is very dear to you.” I took the phone
and it was Hanaa [Fatima’s daughter]. I said, “Hanaa, where are
you?” She said, “I’m here!” Ghazi took the phone back
and said, “What do you think? I’ll do to your daughter what I did
to you.” So I signed the blank pages and fingerprinted them [and] I
started memorizing.

Fatima said the camera crew recorded her
“confession” that terrorists had kidnapped her daughter; that she
was forced to work with Al-Qaeda in order to get her back; that she transported
suicide vests from Kirkuk to Tikrit for use in the provincial council bombing;
and she identified herself in a photo that implicated her in the murder of MP
Nahida al-Deini’s brother.

Every time I made a mistake explaining things, they would turn
the camera off and pretend to hit me for not saying everything exactly as
written. The journalist said, “Just speak, this guy will kill you!”
They told me to say I confessed willingly with no torture and no beating.

The day after her videotaped “confession,” three
officers took Fatima to a court in Beiji, approximately 200 kilometers north of
Baghdad, where the judge dropped the charge of participating in the murder of
Nahida al-Deini’s brother after the general prosecutor said there was no
evidence against her. He then ordered her transfer to Baghdad on charges based
on the testimony she had signed in Tikrit.

After a week of what she described as further mistreatment, authorities
took her to the Directorate of Major Crimes in Karrada (the 52nd Brigade) on
March 7, 2012, for seven days. An interrogation officer refused to question her
because of the marks on her body, she said. Fatima told Human Rights Watch:
“When he saw me he made a phone call and said, ‘Sir, I can’t
carry out this interrogation, this woman is a mess.’”

A committee—Fatima did not know which, but presumed it
was investigating her allegations of abuse—then interviewed her, asked if
she had been beaten in Tikrit, and told her to file a complaint after she
showed them the marks on her arms. “I told them I couldn’t write
because my wrist was broken, so they wrote it for me and I signed,” she
said. The next day officers took her to the interior affairs department in
Tikrit “with a lot of letters and files,” she said, where she
repeated her story to another officer named Jaafer.

They told me they would take me to a judge and see what he
says, and they took me to Tikrit hospital for a medical examination. They
documented the torture marks on my body.[85] A
female doctor inspected me and she got crazy when she saw what was on my body.
They documented everything except the rape, even though it would have been possible
to document the rape. After that they took me to Site 4, and there when they
inspected my body and saw the torture marks on me, they got crazy too. They
told me to write a report and a complaint to bring a suit against Ghazi.

Fatima spent seven months in Site 4 before she saw an
investigative judge, who issued an order for her release, dated January 23,
2013, but she was still in prison in February, when Deputy Prime Minister
Shahristani told Human Rights Watch that “there is no longer a single
person in prison with a judicial order for release.”[86]
After being informed that she was in detention, Shahristani’s office
intervened and prison authorities released her.

Fatima has
filed complaints against Colonel Ghazi with the Site 4 prison administration,
the parliamentary human rights committee, the Interior Ministry, and Deputy
Prime Minister al-Shahristani. In November, Fatima told Human Rights Watch that
she has not received an official response to these complaints, and that Colonel
Ghazi remained at his post until he was killed in July 2013 in a suicide bomb
attack in which the attacker approached Ghazi as if to hug him, and then blew
himself up, according to Fatima.

Israa Salah

US and Iraqi security forces arrested Israa Salah, 45, and
four of her relatives on January 9, 2010, when she was in her cousin’s
home in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyya neighborhood. Security forces took her to
the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in
Karadda, where they tortured her for nine days until she confessed to terrorism
charges. An investigative judge extended her detention pursuant to article 4 of
the Anti-Terrorism Law, despite the fact that she had “blood on her face
and her body still bore the marks of torture,” according to a person who was
present at the hearing.[87]

Israa told Human Rights Watch she was visiting a nephew in
Baghdad when Iraqi security forces and US soldiers stormed the house at 1 a.m.[88]
“They kicked down the door and before I knew it there was a bag over my
head,” said Israa. Then they held Israa and four of her relatives—her
nephew Othman, her aunt Shukreya, her cousin Majida, and Hassan, Majida’s
husband—in the street outside while they searched the house. “The
whole time, the Iraqis were calling me names: bitch, son of a dog, son of a
whore,” Israa said. They asked Israa only her name and the number of children
she had. They did not show her or any of the family members a search or arrest
warrant.

At 4 a.m., security forces put all five family members into
five separate cars. “We drove for about an hour,” Israa said,
“and then we reached a place where they fingerprinted me and checked my
body for bruises. [There] they were all Americans, and they didn’t say a
word to me.” Israa’s nephew Othman told Human Rights Watch that Iraqi
and US security forces then took them all to Camp Cropper, a prison under US
control at the time, close to the Baghdad airport.[89] They
took Israa to the Iraqi-controlled CID, Israa said.

Israa said her torture began at 10 a.m. the next morning in the
CID. Iraqi security forces covered her head with a sack, handcuffed her, and
took her into a small room. When officials asked her name, Israa heard someone
say, “Israa, speak out. Say what you did.” Then he repeatedly call
her “bitch,” “slut,” and “daughter of a
dog.” Israa said that three men repeatedly beat and tortured her,
beginning that morning, lasting for several hours and resuming at around 6 p.m.
the same day.

I heard three voices. At first they didn’t ask me
anything. One of them immediately beat me on my face, breaking my tooth, and I
fainted. They beat the hell out of me, and when I fainted again they took me to
solitary confinement. I heard one of them say, “Take her away.
We’ll enjoy ourselves with her tonight.”

Later that day, Israa said three men again interrogated her.
They again covered her head, handcuffed her, and forced her to kneel, she said.

I heard someone say, “Tell us why you carried out
terrorist operations,” and then told me to sign a confession saying I had
threatened to kill one of my relatives, who had been in the sahwa [Sunni
groups that assisted US forces against insurgents during Iraq’s civil
war]. When I refused to sign, he said to the other men, “Bring in the
wires.” They attached wires to my handcuffs and fingers. When they first
put the electricity on me, I gasped; my body went rigid and the bag came off my
head. I saw a green machine, the size of a car battery, with wires attached to
it.

Israa said the three men tortured her that night and every
night for the next nine days.

I was handcuffed behind my back and they pulled my legs up
and beat me on my feet. Because they hit me so hard, during the falaqa,
the force of the beating sent the handcuffs into my back. This happened
repeatedly and I still have a scar there. They beat me on my face and broke my
jaw. It still hurts, and clicks. They cut my nose open while they were beating
me. They didn’t ask me questions, they just said, “Speak out!
Confess!” There was a rope hanging from the ceiling. They made me climb a
ladder, with my hands cuffed behind my back, and tied the handcuffs to the rope.
Then they kicked the ladder away so that I was hanging like that, from the
handcuffs with my arms behind my back.

Israa displayed the scars to a Human Rights Watch
researcher. She said throughout her detention in CID officers confined her in a
one meter square cell and gave her one piece of bread and a sip of water every
day. They did not allow her to go to the bathroom, and she had to urinate in
the cell. “I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, luckily, because
they gave me so little food,” she said.

Israa said that every evening around 6 p.m. an officer would
come to her cell, cover her head, and walk her around for about 30 minutes
before taking her to the room where the three men interrogated her until
approximately 4 a.m. On the eighth day, she said, she fainted and began
bleeding from her nose. “I stopped shouting,” she said, “So I
heard one of them say, ‘Check her out—she’s not screaming
anymore; the wires might have come off.’” When she failed to revive
and continued to bleed from her nose, Israa said, officers took her to a
hospital where she was given different pills and an IV, then taken back to the CID
the same day.

On the ninth day, Israa said, the men ordered her to sign a
large stack of papers, which she refused to do.

The one who had a huge stack of papers used the
electrocution on me and said “Talk! Confess!” He was beating me on
my back with a black hose while two others were kicking me in my sides.[90]They had this black device that looked like a torch and made a buzzing
noise.They used this on my breast. It made a hole in my dishdasha
[traditional overgarment worn by men and women] and left a mark.[91]

When she did not confess after nine days, the officers sat
her down on a chair and brought her tea and water.

“Oh, Israa,”
they told me, “You have really tired us out! Just sign these papers and
in two days you’ll be out.” But I refused, so [one] said, “What,
do you want us to keep electrocuting you?” I begged him to do anything
but that. So what he said was even worse. He said, “Do you know what we
did in the night? We brought your daughter and husband.”

Officers then told her they had detained her teenage daughter,
Farah, in solitary confinement elsewhere in the same facility and would rape
her if Israa did not confess.

“They knew everything about her: how she was dressed,
who her friends were, and they showed me pictures of her,” Israa said.
She then signed and fingerprinted a blank piece of paper, “But it was a
trick,” she said. “I didn’t know what specifically I had confessed
to until a year later,” when, Israa said, her lawyer told her she was
accused of blowing up a house and carrying out other terrorist attacks in her
neighborhood of Tarmiyya.

Israa’s lawyer provided Human Rights Watch with
several of the documents associated with her case, including photos of what
appear to be burn marks on her hands and leg and a copy of a Health Ministry
report dated March 11, 2010, that confirms that Israa had “red
bruises” on the palms of her hands that looked to be one to two months
old.[92]
The lawyer also provided four color pictures that he said a female deputy
general prosecutor took of Israa on January 14 or 15, about five days after her
arrest, showing what appear to be burn marks on her hands and leg. The deputy
general prosecutor requested that Israa be taken to a hospital, according to
her lawyer, but a judge denied the request.

Israa showed Human Rights Watch marks on her hands, leg, and
breast that were consistent with the photos and medical report and her statements.
Nearly three years after her torture, Israa showed Human Rights Watch a long
scar on her back that she said resulted from where her handcuffs repeatedly
drove into her back as officers beat her on her feet.

On the night after she signed the confession, at 2 or 3
a.m., officers handcuffed Israa’s hands and feet and chained them
together, Israa said.

They put me in a car and told me, “Israa, we’re taking you to a place
you’re really going to like.” I smelled alcohol on their breath,
and when we stopped driving they walked me for a while before taking the bag
off of my head. I saw that we were standing on the river bank. The officer
pointed a gun at my head and told me, “[T]omorrow you’re going to
court. We have your daughter and husband and no one else knows where you are.
So if you say anything or change your story from what is read on the papers,
this is your place, one bullet in your head and you’ll be deep in this
river and no one will ever discover what happened to you.” I told him I
would say anything he wanted as long as he let my daughter go.

The next morning, officers took Israa for about three hours
to a different, smaller cell, where, she said, “It smelled like
hell.” Israa said she saw the dead body of a woman in the room and that
the officers told her that she would “end up like her” if she
didn’t cooperate.

They then took her to investigative judge Dhiya al-Aboudi
in Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court. Israa said that the cut on her nose
was still bleeding when she was brought into the courtroom, that she had a
black eye, and that there were blisters from electric shocks visible on her
hands, but the judge never asked her if she’d been physically abused.

Israa said two of the officers who had interrogated her were
present in the court room. Al-Aboudi asked Israa her name and whether she had
done what was written on the papers, then ordered her detention under article 4
of the Anti-Terrorism Law. She was accused of assisting in carrying out a
bombing that killed two Iraqi policemen in Kadhimiyya and of damaging a house
of her nephew’s neighbor.

When I walked out of the courtroom, one of [the officers
who had been interrogating me] said to me proudly, “See what [the] Mahdi
Army has done to you?”[93] The
other officers [that interrogated me] were also there, laughing and
congratulating each other.

They then brought Israa to the Site 4 detention facility.
Prison officials denied her requests to see her lawyers for three months, she
said, and she remained detained for three years before she had a trial.

Human Rights Watch reviewed the court documents for Israa’s
case, which include a July 3, 2012 appeals court dropping charges of killing a
man by employing a suicide bomber.[94]
The decision confirmed an April 26, 2012 court of first instance decision that
cleared her of charges of terrorism for the assassination of Ahmad Khamis
Mahmoud. The April 26 decision states that Israa Salahhad recanted her
testimony in front of the judges, citing evidence that her confession was
coerced under torture, referencing the medical report, that her
“confession was not supported by any eyewitness testimony or other
evidence.”

The decision references “secret information passed on
by the Americans about her involvement in the case” but states that on
December 26, 2010, the wife of the victim had recanted her accusation against Israa
of having committed the murder.[95]
The April 26 decision does not order her release because, according to the
decision, “her fate is yet to be determined” with regard to other
charges pending against her.

In another appellate decision from July 25, 2012, a panel of
three, including two of the same judges who heard the original trial, convicted
Israa of terrorism and sentenced her to two terms of life imprisonment for allegedly
planting two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that injured an Iraqi soldier
and killed two others.[96]
The decision stated that her confessions provided enough detail that comported
with “other intelligence information provided to the court” to
confirm her participation in these terrorist activities. The decision cites no
other evidence. The decision also says Israa was the head financial adviser for
the Islamic organization [the Islamic State of Iraq] and a member of Al-Qaeda.

Human Rights Watch reviewed documents that appear to be the
testimony that a secret informant gave to US-led coalition forces in 2008,
alleging that Israa participated in procuring women to carrying out suicide
attacks for Al-Qaeda, causing the deaths of two policemen, and that she had
assisted in carrying out an attack on her neighbor’s home. Israa’s lawyer
told Human Rights Watch that coalition forces handed the secret
informant’s testimony over to Iraqi forces when they transferred
detainees in their custody to Iraqi custody.[97]

Israa said another court converted her life sentences to
death sentences on December 23, 2012. The judge summarily confirmed Israa’s
death sentence, according to Israa and her lawyer. In a written complaint that
Human Rights Watch reviewed, Israa’s lawyers name three other individuals
who confessed to committing one of the crimes for which Israa was convicted,
and reiterated that the owner of the house she is accused of having blown up
dropped the charges against her and that her confession was extracted under
torture.

Israa said that the secret informant who provided
testimony in her case also provided testimony that led to the conviction of
another death row inmate on different charges. Israa said that the abuse she
had suffered from interrogators was compounded at Site 4, where she was
initially detained and where she said the warden “treats the inmates with
extreme cruelty.”

She said that when inspection committees occasionally visited
the prison, the warden ordered the women to clean the prison and hid women who
could not be trusted to not complain about prison conditions in solitary
confinement. Israa said that at Site 4 she met another detainee, Nahida, who
was raped by a prison guard while he was transferring her from court to the
prison, and had a child as a result, in October 2012. Israa said that when a
UNAMI delegation came to the prison, Nahida tried to pass one of the delegates
a note telling him what happened, but the warden snatched it from her hand.
Human Rights Watch confirmed with another NGO that, on their visit to Site 4,
other prisoners pointed to a woman with a child and said, “Ask her where
she got that baby,” but that the warden prevented them from speaking with
her.[98]

Israa said that Site 4’s warden used prisoners to
inform on other prisoners in exchange for money and privileges, such as better
food, phone credit, and clothes.

Israa was transferred to death row in January 2013 and was
executed in September 2013, along with 41 men, one of several mass executions
the government carried out in 2013.[99]

Laila Abd al-Rahim

Security forces arrested Laila Abd al-Rahim, 25, and her
mother, who declined to give her name, from a street in Baghdad’s Karrada
neighborhood in June 2011. Security officers accused her of killing her
husband, who was murdered in February 2011. In December, Human Rights Watch
spoke with Laila’s father, mother, and aunt, who said that a policeman
with the rank of major at the Bab al-Sheikh police station raped her on the
second night of her detention. Laila was convicted of murder and sentenced to
death on September 18, 2012, in a trial that comprised a single hearing, based
solely on her confession. Laila’s lawyer and her mother and father told
Human Rights Watch that at trial the judge refused to allow Laila’s allegations
of torture into evidence.[100]

Laila’s mother told Human Rights Watch that five
police officers, one of whom was Aya’s brother-in-law, arrested her and
her daughter at 8 a.m. on June 3, 2011, when they were about to enter their
workplace at an insurance company close to Tahrir Square in Karrada.[101]

One of the officers grabbed me by the neck and shoved me in
the car, and shoved my daughter in the car by her shoulders. They didn’t
show us any warrant, any IDs, nothing. [One of them was] my daughter’s
brother-in-law, Lt. [name withheld], and [there were] four other officers,
including Maj. [name withheld] and a policeman and a major whose names I
don’t know. Only Lieutenant [name withheld] was in uniform. The [rest] were
dressed in civilian clothes. They beat us with guns on the back of our necks to
put our heads down so that we wouldn’t be seen at checkpoints.

Laila’s mother said the officers took them to the Interior
Ministry’s intelligence police headquarters in Bab al-Sheikh, blindfolded
them and refused them food and drink, and separated them. “I heard my
daughter screaming,” she said. At 6 p.m., officers interrogated her and
accused her of inducing her daughter to kill her husband for insurance money.
Then, she said, they took her and her daughter to a courthouse in Karrada, but presented
only Laila to the investigative judge. The judge ordered that Laila be brought
to the Rashid police station, where the murder was originally reported, but
officers instead returned them to Bab al-Sheikh police station and kept them
there overnight, she said. Laila later told her mother that a certain Major
raped her that night in the Bab al-Sheikh police station, and warned Laila not
to tell her mother, or “we will vanquish your mother from
existence.”

The next morning at 10 a.m., officers transferred Laila and
her mother to the Rashid police station, where they kept them together in a
room without electricity, food, water, or a bathroom for three days. “I
paid the guards for water,” said Laila’s mother. On June 6,
officers took the women to another investigative judge in Baghdad al-Jadida
Court, where Laila told the judge that she had been raped and tortured.
According to Laila’s mother, the judge said, “What? Do you want
them to pamper you?”

The judge transferred them to the police major crimes
division, a detention and interrogation facility. An officer interrogated Laila
from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. while other officers kept her mother in another room. Laila’s
mother said she “could hear her screams.”

When they carried her back into the room where I was being
kept, even the police officers felt bad for her. Major [name withheld] told me,
“If she just confesses it will be easier for her.” Some officers
heard that and said, “Allahuakbar, when will you stop?” They
dressed her in jeans so that the marks on her legs wouldn’t show. She
later told me that her interrogator [name withheld] took off his boots and put
them in her mouth, that they electrocuted her. I saw the marks on her
fingertips—and that huge, heavily built men laid her on the ground and
stepped on her back. I saw bruises all over her face that night.

Laila’s mother said that Laila’s brother-in-law was
in the police and that she saw him as well as Laila’s other
brothers-in-law and father-in-law in the Bab al-Sheikh and Rashid police
stations.

The next day, one of the officers brought Laila’s mother
into a room with her daughter, she said, and told her that Laila “had
something to say to me, and not to scream. She told me that when we were in Bab
al-Sheikh, her brother-in-law, a lieutenant, told everyone to get out of the
room, then [the Major] raped her. When I heard this I had a nervous breakdown
and I started beating her.”

The next day, she said, they were taken in front of the same
interrogation judge in the court in Baghdad al-Jadida, where, she said, “[One
of the officers] came into the courtroom to intimidate my daughter so that she
wouldn’t say anything.” Laila’s mother was released on June
7, 2011.The judge ordered Laila to be held for further investigation and
transferred to the Site 4 detention facility.

Site 4 refused her, though, and sent her to a hospital to
get a medical report. They took her to Alweya hospital, near Andalus Square….She
told the doctor that she was raped. The doctor said, “That’s not my
job, I just check to see if you’re sick.”

Human Rights Watch reviewed YouTube video that Laila’s
father and mother said three months later appeared on Facebook, which appears
to show four men in plain clothes interrogating a blindfolded woman.[102] The
men ask Laila how many times someone named Muhammad “fucked” her.
They slap her in the face and tell her they will give her a gun for her to kill
herself after she says she wants to die. One of the men says, “He was a
Sayyid [a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad]. Do you know what that means, a
Sayyid? That means his blood won’t go in vain.” Laila’s mother
and father said the men were referring to Laila’s husband, who they
accused her of killing.

Laila’s father verified that the woman being
interrogated in the video is his daughter and that he could identify two of the
men interrogating her as Laila’s brother-in-law, and another arresting officer
who Laila’s mother identified. Laila’s father said that the major
who Laila says raped her is not visible in the video, but can be heard.

Laila’s father told Human Rights Watch that he filed
complaints with the Interior Ministry’s general inspector on October 4,
2011 and with the Human Rights Ministry.

I said that my daughter was accused of murder and was
tortured and raped. The complaint was transferred to Interior Affairs. They
went to the prison and interviewed my daughter. She told them everything, in
detail, and the complaint went to the court. The Judge of Internal Affairs, at
the Second Rusafa Court, sent for us and took our statements, and issued an
arrest warrant for the officers in the video on October 27, 2011. [Names
withheld] were arrested on July 9, 2012, but not [name withheld]—the one
who raped her is still working, still living a normal life. [The two who were
arrested] were released on bail on November 19, 2012.

Laila’s father said a delegation from the Human Rights
Ministry visited Laila in Site 4 on November 22, 2011. The family also filed a
complaint with Dr. Ibtihal al-Zaydi, the minister of women’s affairs, who
wrote to the Human Rights Ministry on behalf of Laila. Nevertheless, said Laila’s
father, the investigating judge refused to allow her lawyer to introduce the
information about her rape case against the officers into evidence at her
murder trial. The lawyer filed an appeal that, along with Laila’s denial
of her confession, was considered by the general prosecution’s office,
her father said. Laila’s mother said that no doctor’s report was
issued until 10 months later, on April 6, 2012, after the family filed a
complaint with the Interior Ministry’s inspector general.

On September 18, 2012, a judge convicted Laila and sentenced
her to death in a single hearing, based on her confession. The judge refused to
allow Laila’s allegations of torture into evidence. Despite the General Prosecutor
Ghadhanfar Hamoud al-Jassim’s written request on February 7 and July 9,
2013, to have Laila’s allegations of torture and rape introduced into
trial before confirmation of her death sentence, the Federal Court of Appeals
confirmed Laila’s sentence to death by hanging, on August 27, 2013,
without considering the allegations of torture or rape.

At the time of writing, Laila remained in Site 4 pending her
transfer to the death row facility. Her father told Human Rights Watch:

The officers stand accused of rape and torture but they are
out on bail. I don’t know if they are still working. The ministers we
have spoken to all told us that the judiciary is independent, outside the
sphere of their control, and they can’t affect the case.

Nesrin Najim Emad and Marwa Qassem Tamim

Security forces arrested Nesrin Najim Emad, 40, in her home in Baghdad’s Zaafaraniya
neighborhood on December 7, 2009. Security forces arrested her mother, Marwa
Qassem Tamim, in her mid-50s, almost a year later on October 4, 2010 when she went
to the headquarters of the Baghdad Operations Command to search for her son, Thamer,
who had been detained days earlier. Nesrin and Marwa were tried together on
April 17, 2012, convicted of terrorism for kidnapping and murder, and sentenced
to death under article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law on the basis of confessions
they say were coerced under torture. The trial comprised a single hearing. They
have been in Shaaba Khamsa since January 2013.

Nesrin told Human Rights Watch that security forces, whom
she could not identify, accused her of owning a mobile phone used in a
kidnapping and murder.[103]
The officers, who did not show her an arrest warrant, took her to the police
major crimes division in Adhamiyya and held her in solitary confinement for 10
days. During these 10 days, she said, officials beat and tortured her
repeatedly, demanded bribes for her release, and tried to force her to sign a
prepared “confession” admitting that she was the owner of the phone
in question.

There were nine or ten of them. They held me in a room and
beat me. I started to have a seizure, and when I came to, my veil was off of my
head. They didn’t ask me anything, but one of them said to me, “Say
this is your mobile phone and you will go free.” They beat me in my face.
I have a scar on my eyebrow [shown to a Human Rights Watch researcher] and on
the back of my head. One of them named Mouayad sat me down and told me to sign
the papers that he had already filled in. I refused, so he told me that if I
gave him $10,000 I would go free. We sold everything we had and I paid it but
they didn’t release me.

Nesrin said her brother-in-law later told her that Mouayad
had also demanded $6,000 from him in exchange for her release. He paid, but
Mouayad did not release her.

Nesrin said that after the 10 days, when she still refused
to say the phone was hers, Mouayad transferred her to Site 4 detention
facility.

They took me to Site 4 in a blanket and carried me in
because I could not walk [after being beaten]. Maysoon was the warden at the
time. I begged her to take pictures of what happened to me but she refused. I
begged her also not to send me back for interrogation but she made me sign
papers saying I returned to interrogation willingly and sent me back.

Nesrin said that three months later her arresting officers
brought her to an investigative judge in Qasr al-Adalah. Officer Mouayad was in
the courtroom, but she did not have a lawyer. Nesrin said that the judge read
aloud from papers that Mouayad had presented that charged her with kidnapping
and murder, and then said, “There is no confession and no evidence
against her.” Nesrin said that she was then taken to Baghdad Operations
Command (Baghdad Brigades), headquartered in the Green Zone, a special security
forces unit that answers directly to the prime minister.[104]

Marwa Qassem Tamim told Human Rights Watch that Baghdad
Brigades security forces detained her on October 4, 2010, when she visited
their headquarters looking for her son, Thamer, who had been detained days
earlier on suspicion of terrorism. Marqa said that she went with two other sons,
and that guards at the headquarters let them into the building, took their IDs,
and then sent Marwa’s sons away, keeping her there.

They told me there was an arrest warrant for me, but I
never saw it. An officer closed me in a room, started beating me, and asked me
about Ahmad, saying, “What was your role?” They kept me there for
20 days, all the time asking me what I was doing with Thamer and with Nesrin’s
brother-in-law.

Marwa said that security officers repeatedly tortured her at
Baghdad Brigades headquarters. On about October 20, the authorities transferred
Nesrin to the same facility and detained them there together. Nesrin said that
officers beat her, used electricity on her, and hung her from the ceiling, dislocating
her shoulder.

Security officials took Marwa and Nesrin to a different
investigative judge several days after October 20. Marwa said an officer
threatened that if she did not confess in front of the judge he would send her
back to the headquarters and torture her again. The investigative judge
“read out from a piece of paper” that Marwa and Nesrin were accused
of kidnapping and murder. “The officer was there in the room and I was
intimidated, so I told the judge, ‘Whatever is written on that paper, I
did.’”

Marwa said that after she had been at Baghdad Brigades
headquarters for about two months, a “human rights delegation,” who
she referred to as “the Americans,” visited the brigade
headquarters.

They locked us in a room but an American general found us
detained there. The major in charge told him they had just brought us there the
day before. The next day they transferred us to Site 4 because they were afraid
of that general. That was maybe in December 2010.

On April 17, 2012, a court tried Marwa and Nesrin together
and convicted them during the same hearing of kidnapping and murder under
article 406 of the penal code, they both said, but their charges were converted
to terrorism under article 4 for reasons they do not know. Nesrin said:

I tried to tell the judge that I was tortured and my
confession was forced. My brother-in-law was in the courtroom and he tried to
testify on my behalf, but the Baghdad Brigades tortured him and he has a hard
time speaking. All he could get out was “my sister’s
mobile…” and the judge pounced. He didn’t let my brother
finish talking and ordered that we be detained for terrorism.

Nesrin and Marwa said they were transferred from Site 4 to
Shaaba Khamsa in January after they filed a complaint that they had been
tortured. They believe the transfer was punitive. “[The warden] sent us
here without any of our clothes or things,” Nesrin said. “We
don’t have any money or a lawyer… the ones with money can pay
[their way out].”

Marwa told Human Rights Watch that her mother, father, and
husband are blind and that her children have been “living in the
street” since she was detained, because no one is capable of taking care
of them. Nesrin said she has not seen her children in four years.

“I just want a lawyer, even a court-appointed
lawyer,” said Nesrin. “We don’t even know [the identities of
those] who we are accused of kidnapping and killing. The judges just read out
the charges against us. Even a special pardon can’t help us, because we
don’t know who actually issued the complaint against us.”[105]

Duaa Khazal Hamoudi

Duaa Khazal Hamoudi, on
death row since 2009, is one of the longest-serving prisoners in Shaaba Khamsa.
Security forces arrested Duaa, 36, and her brother Yassir, 38, during a raid on
her brother’s home in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood. A court
convicted Duaa of aiding and abetting her husband in the commission of multiple
murders based on a confession that Duaa signed after being held in a secret
facility for a month, where she said she was tortured and beaten. Authorities
held Duaa in the women’s maximum security facility in Kadhimiyya for four
years before transferring her to death row at Shaaba Khamsa.

Duaa told Human Rights Watch that 10 plainclothes men, wearing
masks, who she believes were security officials, raided her brother’s
home at 6 p.m. on November 28, 2005.[106] Duaa
was nursing her infant daughter; her brother, sister-in-law, and their two
children were also there. The men kicked down the door, entered and searched
the house for around 30 minutes, and asked her about her husband by name. When
she answered that she did not know where he was, the men beat her, breaking her
nose and a tooth, then dragged her into a car.

“They didn’t let me dress or put on my abaya,”
Duaa said. “They just took me away. But they didn’t take me to a
police station or a military facility. They took me to a place that they called
a secret investigations unit, but to me it looked like a house.” Duaa said
that six of the men kept her and her brother in this facility for 28 days. They
tied Duaa to a staircase and repeatedly beat and tortured both her and her
brother while interrogating them about five murders that Duaa’s husband,
who had formerly been an officer in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard,
allegedly committed.

“They would only ask me about [my husband], saying
‘Why did he kill so-and-so? Was it for sectarian reasons?’” Duaa
said. “They told me, ‘We can slaughter you and we’ll bury you
and no one will know.’ Is it my fault I married someone who was an
officer in Saddam’s time?”

Duaa recounted how the men summoned her every day at 4 a.m.
and tied her to a staircase to interrogate her. “One day they would spit
on me, another day they would take a hose, put a stick in it, and beat me on
the bottom of my feet. They sprayed water on me when I fainted. I still
can’t walk straight from the falaqa,” Duaa said.

Duaa said that six men would “take turns”
beating her. “They tried to make me stand up and walk straight,”
she said, “and when I couldn’t, they beat me more.” Duaa said
that at another point, the torturers offered her freedom in exchange for sex:
“Eight of them were in the room, and they told me they would give me an
apartment in Karrada and set me free” if she would have sex with them,
she said. When she refused, they threatened to arrest her other brother and
sister, compelling her to fingerprint a prepared confession that Duaa, who is
illiterate, could not read.

They would receive a phone call and start writing [the
confession]. I told them I didn’t know that my husband had murdered
anyone and that it wasn’t my fault, but after 28 days [of abuse], I would
have confessed to slaughtering my own family. I told them, “Okay, I
killed the whole world!”

After the men tortured her in front of her brother, he
signed a confession, and was later also sentenced to death for participating in
the murders, but his sentence was later reduced to five years in prison for
reasons Duaa did not know.

Duaa said that the officers then took her to an
investigative judge in Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court.

Before they took me to the judge’s room, they told
me, “We will get your brother, your whole family, and especially remember
you have sisters.” Just before we went to the court, the one named Alaa
Abu Safa told me, “I will get you executed. And if I don’t,
I’m not an officer.”

One of the officers who had interrogated her and a
court-appointed lawyer she had not seen before were present at the hearing. A judge
issued an order renewing her detention, she said.

The officials then took her back to the place they had been
holding her. Two days later, she said, “A colonel named Khalid came, and
when he saw me there, got furious, demanding that they take me out of
there.” On December 28, 2005, they transferred her to Baghdad’s
central prison for women, which at the time was in Kadhimiyya. At her trial
hearing, on June 31, 2006 Duaa, her brother, and her brother-in-law were all
convicted of aiding murder under articles 47, 48, and 49 of the penal code and
sentenced to death in a single sitting that lasted no more than 10 minutes,
according to Duaa. Duaa remembered the articles of the penal code, but Human
Rights Watch was unable to obtain a copy of the verdict.

Her lawyer tried to speak at the trial, she said, but the
judge told him to “shut up.” When the judge read out her
confession, Duaa learned that she had “confessed” to acting as a
lookout for her husband as he murdered five people and helping him to carry and
bury bodies, although no evidence was presented at her trial other than this
confession.

Her brother and brother-in-law both testified at trial that Duaa
“stayed at home all the time” and had no involvement with any crime
her husband may have committed. Duaa claims investigators found no evidence
linking her, her brother, or her brother-in-law to any crime, and that they
were convicted based on confessions coerced under torture. In 2007, when Duaa was
still detained in Kadhimiyya, then-Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi visited her
in prison and filmed her making a statement about the irregularities of her
case.

Four months after her trial, an appellate judge in
Baghdad’s central criminal court confirmed her sentence. She did not have
a lawyer at this or subsequent appeals, she said. Duaa said that she has been
to 10 court hearings since her initial detention, but was unsure of each of the
hearings’ significance. In each one, she said, the judge read out her
name, her conviction and her sentence, and then the hearing ended. She did not
have the opportunity to speak and has not had a lawyer at any of these
subsequent proceedings. She was transferred to death row on June 10, 2009.

“For the past nine years I have been in prison,”
Duaa said.

My son doesn’t recognize me
and my daughter won’t come see me. My father was in a wheelchair and died
shortly after they arrested me. They ruined my reputation and the reputation of
my family, because I married a man who was an officer in Saddam’s time.

Duaa said that her family was forced to sell their house and
possessions to pay for her lawyer, but that “a lawyer in Iraq is helpless—every
time they try to speak they get shut up.” She said the officers who originally
detained her repeatedly asked her mother for bribes to exact her release. She
filed a complaint with the Human Rights Ministry, she said, and a woman named
Amal Mustafa from the ministry came to visit her to record her complaint, but
she was not aware of any result. After that, she said, other detainees warned
her not to file further complaints because it could trigger
“resentment” and accelerate her execution. “Even my lawyer
told me to stop filing complaints,” she said, “He said it was
dangerous. If you complain against a captain, he becomes a general—so
what’s the use?”

Duaa said that 40 days prior to her interview with Human
Rights Watch, a “judges’ committee” visited the death row
facility, took the prisoners’ names, and asked them whether they had been
tortured in detention. “After eight years they’re asking me for
marks of torture?” said Duaa.

Of course they will not find marks and of course nothing
will be proved. All I want now is to speak out. Why, when someone does
something bad, does the wife get punished? With this government we are
powerless. All we have is our tears.

Duaa said she did not know why her sentence had not yet been
carried out, while other women had been executed during her time on death row.

Safaa Abdelrahim Ahmad and Ruqaya Abbas Ahmad Jaafari

On December 28, 2008, about
30 security forces from a police regiment in Najaf arrested Safaa Abdelrahim Ahmad, 29, from her home in Mahmoudeya, a large town on
the southern edge of Baghdad province that was an epicenter of sectarian
warfare in 2006 - 2008. The security forces detained Safaa in her home overnight
with her four young children and questioned her about the whereabouts of her
sister’s fiancé, Hossam.

They then took her to
the regiment’s Najaf headquarters about 130 kilometers south of Baghdad
where security forces blindfolded her and kept her alone in a room in her
“underclothes” from 5 a.m. until 1 p.m., when they brought her into
a room full of officers who tied her hands and feet “so tight they were
turning blue,” took her gold jewelry, and beat her. According to Safaa,
an officer said, “She is beautiful, who wants to take her home?”

When Safaa’s mother, Ruqaya
Jaafari, 51, came to Najaf to secure her release, security forces
arrested Ruqaya and two of Safaa’s sisters, Sabah and Nebraz, and detained
them together with Safaa for three months and seven days without allowing them
to see a lawyer. Police accused all of them of participating in a kidnapping
and murder that Safaa’s sister’s fiancé Hossam allegedly
committed, despite the fact that the victim’s wife told police that Safaa
and her family did not commit the crime, Safaa said.

Ruqaya said she offered to try to help the police locate Hossam
if they released Safaa and the rest of her family. “The officer told me,
‘I have nothing against you or your family. Just bring me 11 daftar ($110,000)
and I’ll set you free. If you can’t pay, I’ll charge you with
terrorism…and you’ll get death sentences,” said Ruqaya.

During the three-month period, security forces held Ruqaya, Safaa,
Sabah, and Nebraz; they beat and sexually assaulted them, according to Safaa and
Ruqaya. “They beat me on my feet, beat me with a chain on my arm, and hit
me on my face with a ring,” Ruqaya said. “I tried to stop him from
[raping] my daughters and he shoved my head against a wall.”

Safaa said that officers sexually abused her during
interrogation.

They used a thick black tube they called the
“donkey.” They beat me with it and inserted it into my vagina. They
chained me to a bed and threatened to rape me with their dogs. They asked me
how I had sex with my husband and made me dance with them.

On January 21, 2009, officers forced Safaa and Ruqaya, who
are both illiterate, to sign papers that they could not read. “We
didn’t know what was written on them,” said Ruqaya, “but the
officer said that if we signed them he would let us go.” On January 28,
2009, officers brought the women an investigative judge in Najaf. One of their
interrogators was present in the courtroom, and they did not have a lawyer,
they said.

“The judge read out some fabricated charges, and then [charged
us],” said Ruqaya. Officers then took the women back to the regiment
headquarters in Najaf. On April 7, 2009, they were transferred to Karbala
prison, while Sabah was transferred to the juvenile facility in Baghdad and Nebraz
was transferred to the Baghdad women’s facility. The next court hearing
that they attended was held in Karbala on October 21, 2009, when a judge
convicted all four women of four counts of murder under article 406 of the
penal code, on the basis of confessions that they signed.

The court sentenced Safaa and Ruqaya to death, and handed
down life sentences to Sabah and Nebraz. On appeal, the charges against all
four women were converted to terrorism under article 4. Safaa and Ruqaya have
been detained on death row since November 7, 2009. Nebraz remains in Site 4,
and Sabah remains in the juvenile detention facility in Karrada.

The women were represented by a lawyer, but he “was
working for them, not us. We paid him 13 million Iraqi dinars [$11,300] but he
said nothing at trial,” Ruqaya recalled.

Safaa and Ruqaya said that a prison guard raped Nebraz, Ruqaya’s
younger daughter, in prison in Karbala and that officers took Sabah and Nebraz for
blood tests on December 18, 2009, which showed that Nebraz was pregnant. They
filed a complaint with internal affairs in prison in Karbala, they said. A
judge came to the prison to investigate the complaint, and when he learned her
last name was the name of a large Sunni tribe—he said “Oh, so
you’re a terrorist.” The women say they no longer have a lawyer
because they cannot afford one. “God is our lawyer now,” said Ruqaya.

Noura Hadi Karim

Intelligence officers detained Noura Hadi Karim, 51, in 2009
on the basis of testimony provided by a secret informant, who accused her of
kidnapping and selling children, which she believed was retribution for a
personal dispute.

Noura said that police officers from the Salheya police
station arrested her while she was walking in the street and did not show her a
warrant.[107]
Over the next several days, they questioned her from midnight to 6 a.m.,
repeatedly asking her if she kidnapped children or helped another woman to sell
children. Noura said that officers tortured her every night for four days.

Every night they would take me, electrocute and beat me.
They even ripped my nails from my toes. I have blood clots in my legs from the
beatings and I still have scars on my head [shown to a Human Rights Watch
researcher].

Noura said that one of the officers interrogating her
demanded US $40,000 for her release.

He told me, “As soon as you give us this, we’ll
get you out. If you don’t pay, you’ll hang.” He told me that
he had my daughter and that they were “doing what they wanted” with
her, so I told him to write whatever he wanted and I’d sign it.

Officers “wrote up papers” and forced her to
fingerprint them on each of the 12 days that they detained her, said Noura, who
is illiterate. She understood that the papers, comprising “many, many
sheets of paper full of writing,” were a confession, but said that
officers did not explain or read it to her. On the 12th day of her detention,
officers took Noura to an investigative judge in the Central Criminal Court. Noura
said she never actually saw the judge. Officers gave her
“confession” to the judge, and she does not know what happened
during the hearing, but security officials told her that a judge charged her
with kidnapping under article 421 of the penal code, apparently on the basis of
the secret informant testimony and her coerced confession, she said.

Noura said that officers took her to Alweya hospital before
taking her to prison, where a female doctor gave her a pregnancy test.

I told her my husband was dead, but [officers] told her to
check and see if I was pregnant. I told her they tortured me, but she just gave
me a pregnancy test and then they took me here.

Security officials then transferred her from the hospital to
the Site 4 detention facility, where she remains in detention. “They had
to carry me in [to Site 4] on a blanket” because she was unable to walk
due to the abuse she sustained during interrogations, she said.

In 2010, Noura said,
officers charged her with having a false ID, but the charge was dismissed when
the judge saw that the ID she was accused of falsifying was dated 2010, one
year after she had already been in detention. When Human Rights Watch spoke
with her she was not aware of the progress of the case against her for her
alleged participation in kidnapping, or when she should next appear in court.
She said she has never met with a lawyer.

Iraqi Law Prohibiting Torture

Iraq’s Constitution, under article 37 (c), prohibits
“all forms of psychological and physical torture and inhumane
treatment.”[108]
Article 37 also states, "Any confession made under force, threat, or
torture shall not be relied on, and the victim shall have the right to seek compensation
for material and moral damages incurred in accordance with the law."

Article 127 of Iraq's Code of Criminal Procedure bans the
use of “any illegal methods to influence the accused and extract a
confession” and states that “mistreatment, threatening to harm,
inducement, threats, menace, psychological influence, and the use of narcotics,
intoxicants and drugs are all considered illegal means.”[109]

Article 333 of the Penal Code criminalizes the actions of
any public official or agent who tortures or orders the torture of a person
accused of a crime, witness, or informant in order to compel a confession and
provides for criminal liability for torture or other instances of abuse in
custody, stating that “any employee or public servant who tortures, or
orders the torture of an accused, witness, or expert in order to compel that
person to confess to committing a crime, to give a statement or information, to
hide certain matters, or to give a specific opinion will be punished by
imprisonment or detention. The use of force or threats is considered to be
torture.”[110]

IV. Substandard Conditions in Women’s Prisons

Overcrowding

Reports issued by UNAMI, the parliamentary Human Rights
Committee, and the Ministry of Human Rights all note that overcrowding is a
major problem in Iraq’s prisons generally.[111]
Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told Human Rights Watch that prior
to December 2012, large numbers of male and female suspects were illegally held
for prolonged periods in facilities run by the Interior and Defense ministries
due to overcrowding in prisons administered by the Justice Ministry.[112]

All 14 women we interviewed in the Rusafa complex (Site 4)
in Baghdad’s Central Prison for Women said the facility was extremely
overcrowded. “When they took me into the prison, all the women started
shouting, ’No, not another one! There's no room!’” said Sabeha
Ezz al-Din, who was detained in Site 4 for two months on suspicion of terrorism
charges.[113]
The warden at Site 4 told Human Rights Watch that 350 women were detained at
the facility, but did not provide numbers disaggregated by charge and by the
number of women convicted versus those pending trial.[114]

Women inside Site 4 gave estimates of between 500 and 800
women detained in the facility, which was built to hold 250 prisoners.[115] Five
former Site 4 detainees, three of whom were transferred to Shaaba Khamsa two
weeks prior to our February 2013 visit, estimated 600-700 women were detained
in Site 4.[116] Human
Rights Watch was unable to determine the prisoner census at the time of our visit.

Fatima Hussein said she was shocked by how many women were
detained at the facility.

When they first brought me in, I thought, this is not bad,
compared to what I had been through. But when I got in discovered a whole city
of women inside. I said to the women there, are you kidding me?[117]

Women’s testimonies indicated that the overcrowding in
the prison was due in part to women being detained for long periods without
trial, or not being released after they had served their sentences. Fatima said
some women she met in Site 4 had been there for as many as 10 months without trial.

I met one woman, called Um Muhammad Sawareekh
[“rockets”] because she was charged with firing a missile. She had
a release order dated years prior and still hadn’t been released.[118]

Women at the Shaaba Khamsa death row facility, housed in the
Camp Justice compound in Kadhimiyya, also complained of overcrowding. Nour, the
warden at Shaaba Khamsa, said that while the facility’s maximum capacity
was 25 women, there were currently 36 women detained there, plus children
detained with their mothers.[119]

Lack of
Adequate Health Care

The state has not properly allocated resources to provide adequate
physical and psychological health care to women in detention. All of the women
we interviewed said that they had never seen a mental health professional in
prison. The warden told Human Rights Watch that the facility has an obstetrician/gynecologist
on site, but only two of the women detainees whom we interviewed said they been
examined by an obstetrician/gynecologist in Site 4.[120]
Some women detained there said they believed that an obstetrician/gynecologist
visited Site 4, but that they were not notified when she was at the prison and
had not had an opportunity to see her.[121]

Of the seven women we
interviewed at Shaaba Khamsa, none had seen an obstetrician/gynecologist. Girls
sentenced to death are held in the Karrada juvenile detention facility until
they turn 18, the minimum age under Iraqi law for execution, then transferred
to death row. Children under the age of four are kept with their mothers in
prison—including in the death row facility—and once they turn four
are transferred to state care.[122]

Two of the women we
interviewed said they depended on their relatives to bring them food and
medicine they needed for long-standing illnesses.[123] Ibtihal Ahmad, 70, said. “I have to get my
family to bring in special food and medicine because the prison can't or won't
provide it, I don’t know which.” Some detainees said the prison
administration at Site 4 had refused to allow their families to bring food,
medicines, clothes, and feminine hygiene products.[124]

Four women said that although prisons have scheduled doctor
visits, detainees were rarely treated inside the hospital and could not see
doctors for follow-up care.[125]
Several women in Site 4 and in Shaaba Khamsa complained that they had
difficulty seeing a doctor because the prison administration adhered to a
strict schedule alternating visits between the patients, regardless of their
medical condition. One woman in Site 4, Hanan al-Fadl, said, “Even if you
are dying, if it's not your turn you can't see a doctor.”[126]

Nadia Ali Abdullah said that she was treated for her cancer
in 2010 in India, but she was unable to return there for a follow-up visit in
2012 due to her incarceration.[127] In
prison, her family brings her special food and the medicine she needs to treat
her cancer—prescribed in India, it
costs 500,000 Iraqi Dinar ($435) every 15 days, she said. Nadia insisted that
she has not been taken to a hospital since being jailed and did not have access
to specialist medical treatment. “I have seen a doctor here but I
haven’t seen an oncologist since I’ve been in prison and no doctor
has ever done a [test] to determine how my cancer is,” she said.[128]

Israa Salah told Human Rights Watch that doctors, including
a gynecologist, had started visiting Site 4 more regularly after demonstrations
protesting security forces abuses and ill-treatment of women in prison started
in December 2012 and before her transfer in mid-February 2013, but she was not
able to confirm whether such visits were ongoing. “Here [at Shaaba
Khamsa], the only medical treatment we receive is paracetamol,” said Israa,
referring to a mild analgesic.[129]

Hanan al-Fadl, in Site 4, said in February 2013 that she had
been treated for cancer years prior and was in remission. She sent a text
message to an Iraqi human rights activist on May 3, 2013, saying that wardens
had put her in solitary confinement and were denying her food, and begged the
activist to send her food with women in their abayas. “I feel I am
going to die from hunger,” she said, “and you all know my health
situation.”[130]

Um Aqil, an employee
at Shaaba Khamsa, told Human Rights Watch in December that there had not been a
kitchen at the facility for six months, and that as a result food was scarce
and what food was available was “inedible.”[131]

Impact of Executions
on Detainees

The worst aspect of the Shaaba Khamsa facility, Um Aqil said, was that the hall where women and
their children are kept is in earshot of the location where prisoners are hanged.
“They are right next to this hall, so they hear the clicking of the trap
door when someone is hanged,” she said. Men and women are executed in the
same location, and men are usually executed first on the days when the
executions take place, so the women in the hall know that on that day
“someone’s turn has come, but they do not know who,” she
said. “They give them no advance notice, just take them two or three at a
time and kill them. They wait their turn in the room—[the other inmates]
see it happen.”

Um Aqil said that of
the 31 women detained in Shaaba Khamsa in December 2012, 16 still had appeals
pending. Some women remained on death row for upwards of six years, while
others were executed immediately, she said. “Some of the victims’
families are always asking about when [the prisoner will be executed],”
she said. “If the victim’s family has wasta (connections),
the prisoner is executed at once. If not, they’ll be on death row for
years.” Both she and Nour, the warden in Shaaba Khamsa, said that the Prime
Minister’s Office sends orders for who is to be executed at a particular
time.[132]

Um Aqil told Human
Rights Watch that the opacity and unpredictability of executions and the
proximity of women’s living quarters to the gallows have devastating
effects on inmates’ psychological health.[133] Several
women in Shaaba Khamsa said the uncertainty around when they will be executed
and the proximity of their living quarters to the gallows heightened the
atmosphere of fear and hopelessness in the facility.

Nesrin Najim Emad,
detained in Shaaba Khamsa since January 2013, said that she had become
depressed and suicidal since she was transferred to Shaaba Khamsa.[134]
“Every time an execution takes place we can hear it, and it’s making
us crazy,” she said. “We don’t have doctors here to help
us.” She does not have access to psychiatric care, she said. “Now
that my brother is dead, no one comes to visit me on visiting day,” said Nesrin.
“Why are they keeping us here like this? They should just kill us.”

V. Government Responses to Allegations of Abuse

In December 2012, two months after a local NGO reported that
security forces regularly mistreat women during arrest, interrogation, and
detention, Iraq’s parliament held a special session to discuss alleged
abuses of women in prison. Parliamentarians called on the government to
investigate, as did other government officials.[135]
In late December, anger in Sunni areas over government security forces’
arrest of 10 bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafi al-Essawi and the mistreatment
of detainees, particularly women, spread to the streets. On December 25,
demonstrations began throughout Sunni-majority provinces, calling on the
government, as a chief demand, to release female prisoners and apologize for
abuses against them.

In response, Prime Minister al-Maliki announced on January
8, 2013 that he had established a committee to investigate allegations of abuse
against female detainees (“Committee of the Wise”), and that other
committees would address protesters’ other demands, including illegal and
prolonged detentions, the disproportionate use of the Anti-Terrorism Law
against Sunnis, and other criminal justice issues.

Government officials
heading these committees pledged that all detainees would be brought before
investigating judges within 24 hours of arrest as Iraqi law requires; that the
government would end the use of testimony by secret informants as the sole
basis for convictions; and that authorities would transfer female detainees, many
of whom were detained too far from their families to receive visits, to their
home provinces to serve their sentences.

On February 3, Deputy
Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, whom Maliki tasked to negotiate with
protestors, announced the government had released over 3,000 detainees,
including some women, and made an unprecedented apology to those who had
remained in detention despite having never been charged or having received
judicial release orders years earlier.[136]

Government officials and others gave conflicting statements
to Human Rights Watch about how many detainees had been released and under
which procedures. Human Rights Watch could only confirm that at most the
government released 50 women who had been detained illegally, in some cases despite
judicial orders for their release, Maliki issued a pardon for some detainees
and governmental ad-hoc committees facilitated the release of a small number of
others. As far as Human Rights Watch is aware, Maliki has not ordered
investigations into allegations that women were illegally detained or abused in
interrogation. Numerous officials, including the human rights and justice
ministers, the Interior Ministry spokesperson, and the prime minister himself,
have denied claims of serious and systematic abuses against women.

Government
Responses to Claims of Illegal Arrests and Torture

Iraqi officials who spoke to Human Rights Watch all dismissed
claims of torture and abuse as exceptional or denied them altogether. Some
stated that such instances were not the fault of the current government but
carry-over practices from Saddam Hussein’s time. Iraq is still in a
“transition from dictatorship,” one parliamentarian said.[137]
Other officials characterized women detainees who alleged they were tortured as
liars.[138]

Some officials justified circumvention of Iraqi laws and
detention procedures because of Iraq’s instability. “We have a
terrorism problem, which requires the government to take harsh measures,”
said Sami al-Askari, a parliamentarian and member of Maliki’s Dawa party.
“National security law is different from normal laws. That’s why
the majority of people detained are not people who have already been convicted.”[139]

General Muhammad, head of the Interior Ministry’s
human rights directorate, told Human Rights Watch the ministry was
“making efforts” to move most investigation procedures from
security officers to investigative judges, as required by Iraq’s Code of
Criminal Procedure.[140] These
changes were intended to combat the occurrence “individual instances”
of abuse of detainees, he said. “If mass arrests happen, they are
performed highly professionally and with respect, and when this happens, it
happens only for a few hours, and only those who carry guns, and eyewitnesses....
We don’t arrest just anybody.”[141] He
and others denied that abuse of women detainees is widespread.

Aqil Tarahy, inspector general of the Interior Ministry,
told Human Rights Watch that instances of abuse of detainees were “only
limited, individual cases, not systematic.”[142] He
said, “We need time to progress from where we were before, which was a
total absence of human rights culture—a lot of people don’t
understand what that means. Saddam created monsters, and some of these monsters
still work in our ministries.”[143]

General Muhammad and the ministry’s spokesperson, General
Saad Maan, insisted that the ministry investigates allegations of torture. They
said that if the incident is proven, the implicated officer is “submitted
to the judicial system.”[144]
The Interior Ministry’s human rights directorate, they said, probes
whether every detainee has a detention warrant that was extended and renewed
properly, whether the detainee was able to make contact with his family, knew
the charges against him or her, has seen a judge, or has complained of being
tortured. Inspectors also examine the quality of detainees’ food and
their access to sufficient sunlight, medical care, and family visits, they said.

Interior Ministry officials could not provide documentation
of any case of an official who had been prosecuted and convicted of torturing a
detainee. Inspector General Tarahy told Human Rights Watch that “about 19
officers and policemen have been sent to the courts” for abuses against
detainees in 2012, but that “whether or not they have been convicted is
up to the courts.”[145] General
Muhammad said he did not know the last time an officer had been prosecuted for
human rights violations.[146]

General Muhammad said in one case a detainee told an
inspector in November 2012 that an officer had tortured him, and that the human
rights directorate was still waiting for the medical report in February 2013.[147]
In the meantime, he said, the officer against whom the complaint was issued had
been transferred to another facility. In general, he said, if a detainee complains
of his or her treatment, “the tortured person submits evidence and the
accused person submits evidence, and they should both have lawyers, and the
inspector general will investigate. If a person can prove this in front of the
investigative judge, then we will start an investigation in this office.”[148]

Tarahy told Human Rights Watch that the Interior Ministry
has an “open door policy, with hotlines to file complaints with the director
of internal affairs and the inspector general,” and that the ministry
conducts “field visits to police stations and in the field to ask
questions of citizens.”[149] In
February, Human Rights Watch submitted a formal request to the general
inspector’s office for statistics on these investigations and the results
but has not received a response.

The warden at Site 4 told Human Rights Watch that numerous
accountability measures were in place to identify women who were abused before
their transfer to prison, that violators are held accountable and that she and
the rest of the prison staff strictly adhere to intake measures:

When women come here, there should be an arrest warrant, a
copy of the original judicial decision, an ID and the inmate’s
information sheet and family history. The detaining agency sends all this
information to the hassaba department [the Justice Ministry department
that maintains a register of admissions and releases] and to general admission
and a picture is taken to ensure the inmate is identifiable.[150]

The warden emphasized that the state is required to carry
out medical procedures before she admits a woman to the prison.

The patrol that brings the woman here must take her to the
hospital first, then bring her medical report with her here. It must be from a
government hospital and it must be from the day of admission. If the medical
report is dated two days ago I won’t accept her. The report should say
whether she is pregnant, was tortured, or had an operation. The girl should see
a gynecologist and have an ultrasound to clarify whether she is pregnant. That
way she can’t later claim she was raped by the prison administration and
try to frame the prison.[151]

The warden claimed that she herself “personally
physically inspected” every woman upon admission to ensure she had not
been abused prior to arriving.

If the inmate claims she has been raped or tortured, I file
a complaint to the Attorney General and the judiciary. I check women’s
bodies for torture marks. No one has ever said that they were raped or tortured
when I admitted them. Sometimes, six or seven months after they’ve been
here, they start talking. But even then I don’t hear it from her, I hear
it from whatever human rights organization she’s been talking to. Then I
file a complaint.[152]

According to the warden, the complaints she forwarded on
behalf of prisoners were usually heard by an investigative committee from
either the Supreme Judicial Council or the Interior or Defense ministries. She
was unclear about which situations would give rise to each of these
bodies’ conducting an inspection. The warden said that most
inmates’ claims of abuse were lies.[153]

Former employees in the Defense Ministry told Human Rights
Watch that inspectors general in the Interior and Defense ministries acted as
an independent check on security forces’ behavior, but that these
institutions are now aligned with the government and the agenda of the prime
minister’s office.[154] Two
former employees described how the prime minister
took control of Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry in 2010 after the ministry
exposed abuses at the Sur Ninewa (Muthanna airport) prison compound and probed
the existence of a secret prison at Camp Honor in Baghdad’s Green Zone.[155] Prime Minister Maliki appointed Dawa party member
Muhammad Shia Sudani to head the Human Rights Ministry and the institution
promptly stopped its aggressive probes into governmental conduct, they said.
Several human rights inspectors who had been associated with the
ministry’s investigations into security organizations close to Maliki
fled the country fearing reprisals.[156]

Human Rights Watch requested manuals that officials said
governed the training of officers, interrogation procedures, a list of
detention facilities and security forces, and investigation results from the
Interior and Defense Ministries, but at time of writing had not received a
response.

Prisoner
Releases

In February 2013, Deputy Prime Minister al-Shahristani
acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that authorities had held detainees in
prison after judges issued orders for their release.[157]
He and the warden at the women’s facility at Site 4 told Human Rights
Watch that some detainees with judicial release orders have remained in prison
for months or years because they lacked the necessary Interior Ministry
approval to be released.[158]

Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm a single case in
which the government compensated detainees for arbitrary detention, as required
by international law.[159]

He blamed the
problem on administrative delays and said the waiting period procedure had been
“cancelled,” enabling the government to release thousands of
detainees previously caught in an administrative black hole. Shahristani
claimed that “there is no longer a single person in detention who has a
judicial order for release.”[160]
Human Rights Watch documented that at least three women were in prison at the
time despite having judicial orders for their release.[161]

A number of the officials, community leaders, and lawyers
working with the government committees tasked with overseeing prisoner releases
expressed uncertainty as to the actual number of women released from prison
after the prime minister’s promised reforms, and gave widely varying
accounts of the procedures by which the releases took place.

Amer Khuzaie, Minister of State for National Reconciliation,
said in February that 37 women had been released.[162]
That same week, a lawyer working with the “committee of the wise”
on the release of women detainees said the number was “no more than
20.”[163]
The warden for the Site 4 detention facility told Human Rights Watch on
February 28:

[M]ost of the girls being held for article 4 [terrorism
charges] are being released, if they haven’t been a party to an explosion
or killing. Until now more than 40 girls accused of article 4 have been
released, and in total there have been about 90 releases from all over Iraq.[164]

On February 21, a lawyer working with the “Committee
of the Wise” said that the committee had released 80 women, 30 of whom
were charged with terrorism; all were Sunni, he said.[165] A
legal adviser for the “Committee of the Wise” told Human Rights
Watch that “90 per cent of female detainees have no legal basis for their
arrest.”[166]

A parliamentarian from Anbar, one of the protest areas, said
he did not know of anyone from Anbar who has been released. He added that
“the women who are released are released on certain conditions: they
don’t talk about what happened to them in detention, especially bad
treatment, torture, or rape. They are all too afraid of being arrested again to
talk anyway—they all know they could be re-arrested at any moment.”[167]

In the same week that Shahristani said the waiting period
procedure had been canceled, the warden of the Site 4 women’s detention
facility told Human Rights Watch that “someone from high up”
informed her there were new procedures for administering the waiting period
procedure and that the background check to determine whether there were
outstanding warrants for detainees should now start upon the detainee’s
transfer into prison, rather than after they have obtained a judicial release
order.[168]
She stated unequivocally that the prison no longer held women beyond their
sentences or beyond the time when they were granted a release order. On the
same day, Human Rights Watch interviewed women in the prison who said that they
had judicial orders for release but that security officers refused to release
them until they or their family members paid bribes.

VI. Shortcomings of the Legal System

Iraq’s judiciary, rather than a site of accountability
and justice, is instead a locus of further abuse. Like their military and
police counterparts, judges selectively apply Saddam Hussein-era laws, and the
penal and criminal procedure codes provide judges wide leeway in sentencing,
allowing them to shield security forces from accountability. Human Rights Watch
interviewed judges, Iraqi rights advocates, lawyers and government officials familiar
with how Iraq’s criminal justice system fails to protect citizens from
abuses, particularly in terrorism-related cases.

Defense lawyers complained that judges ignore visible signs
of physical abuse on women. Many women prisoners told Human Rights Watch that
judges sentenced them on the basis of confessions obtained under torture,
including sexual violence. “A women detainee cannot tell an investigative
judge that she has been tortured,” said one lawyer, who said that
security officers threaten women with retaliation if they complain of abuse,
and that judges are under pressure to hand down convictions.[169]

Executive interference, legal obstacles, corruption, and judges’
reliance on coerced confessions and the testimony of secret informants when
issuing arrest warrants and convictions are some of the key shortcomings those
interviewed by Human Rights Watch raised.

Executive Interference

The Maliki government gained de facto control over
government bodies originally conceived to be independent, like the Integrity Commission
(the government body charged with investigating governmental corruption and
referring cases of corruption involving public officials to the judiciary) and the
Supreme Court.[170]

The concentration of authority by the prime minister has
created an environment in which powerful individuals exploit the judiciary to
serve personal interests, rather than the judiciary acting as a locus of
accountability.[171]

“The judiciary started to collapse in the middle of
the last regime, when [Saddam Hussein implemented] the condition that you must
be a Ba’ath party member to be a judge,” a former judge told Human
Rights Watch.[172]

After the regime change, there emerged a new generation of
judges based on political consensus between the parties, not qualifications. In
addition, the formation of new courts, in particular the central criminal
courts that specialize in trying people charged with terrorism, contributed to
the problem.

Recently-appointed judges are not politically independent,
he said. Other judges and lawyers told Human Rights Watch that certain judges,
particularly investigative judges in Baghdad’s central criminal court, regularly
violate suspects’ right to a fair trial because they are
“politicized.”

One judge referred to a speech that Maliki gave at a
Lawyers’ Syndicate conference on October 5, 2012.[173]

[Maliki] was angry, and said, “Why do you take cases
of terrorists?” I could not believe it, because this is the most basic
concept of criminal law, that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. Many
of us just looked at each other in surprise. [Federal Supreme Court Head] Medhat
Mahmoud was there, [Chief Prosecutor] Judge Ghadhanfar was there, and many
others, and none of them said anything. As judges, when we hear such things, we
wonder if anyone in the government has any understanding of the concept of a
state of law.[174]

Human Rights Watch interviewed several judges who have tried
numerous terrorism cases; each alleged that some investigative judges commit
serious violations of suspects’ due process rights because of their
collusion with security officers and because of the considerable influence
Maliki exerts over the judiciary.[175] One
told Human Rights Watch:

We have judges who are completely outside legal procedure
and are following political projects. There are four in particular, the most
infamous, and their backing by the executive branch makes them almost
invulnerable. It is not about the law, it is about people who dictate the
rules, and what their moods dictate. These people are supported by a very
powerful side, are feared by even the legal system, and work closely with the
security forces. They will sign arrest warrants after the arrests have been
made. Sometimes, when the security forces find it difficult to have judges
issue arrest warrants after arrests, and fraudulently pre-dated, they have
started to bring judges from Baghdad to investigate cases. They use different
excuses for this—that judges in this province cannot function well, for
example—but it is clear what is happening.[176]

Two other criminal judges present in the interview confirmed
this account.[177]

A government official who works closely with the prime
minister’s office told Human Rights Watch that some investigative judges
regularly collude with security officers to prolong detentions illegally and to
extract bribes from detainees.[178]

“[Some] judges give [officers] a blank check;
they’ll give them a piece of paper signed and stamped,” he said.[179]
He said that while lawyers could in theory object to the results of an
investigation because of investigative judges’ abuses, they were afraid
of possible repercussions. “I know of one lawyer who objected to the
investigative judges’ decision,” he said. “He was arrested
two days later and put in prison for years.”[180]

A lawyer described a similar relationship between lawyers
and investigative judges.

Court-appointed lawyers have agreements with investigative judges.
The agreement is that the appointed lawyer will not speak, will not do anything
other than sign for what is presented. I’ve seen court-appointed lawyers
try to speak on behalf of their client, and the judge answered, “Shut up.
Don’t talk.” If a lawyer won’t sign for a deposition because
the detainee was tortured, the judge will say, “Okay, we have other
lawyers.” And the lawyers need the job.[181]

Collusion between investigative judges, lawyers and security
forces would leave abused suspects no opportunities for accountability. The
departments responsible for investigating security forces’ abuses
ultimately rely on investigative judges to follow through with investigations
and trials of alleged abusers.[182]

Officials in the Human Rights Ministry and in the Defense
and Interior ministries’ human rights directorates told Human Rights
Watch that, regardless of the measures they take to investigate detention
facilities and detainees’ claims of abuse, responsibility for
investigating these claims and conducting criminal trials against alleged
abuses rests with the judiciary.[183] Executive
interference has hobbled the oversight capability of the judiciary, as well as
that of the various inspectors-general and human rights directorates tasked
with investigating abuses.[184]

While some judges are complicit with the violations of
suspects’ due process rights, others have credible fears for their
physical safety if they reported abuses. “We know there are threats and
pressure on the judges from the security forces,” a former judge said.[185]

Legal Obstacles

Two laws require that judges seek permission from
“interested ministers” before investigating officers in their chain
of command. Article 136 (b) of Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure
stipulates that the “responsible minister” must give permission for
transfer of an accused person for trial for an “offense committed during
the performance of an official duty.”[186] Article
136(b) is a major obstacle to prosecuting government officials who have engaged
in or authorized abuse of detainees. According to a CPA memorandum from 2003 referring
to article 136 (b):

Anecdotal evidence suggests that [the] law [which allows a
minister to block implementation of an arrest warrant if the suspect is carrying
out official duties], has had a considerable effect on the number of
investigations brought against government officials, because it is presumed
that they will be protected by their ministers and therefore that energies
expended in investigating them will be wasted.[187]

Security ministers and Maliki himself have invoked article
136 (b) to shield officers suspected of crimes including torture. Iraq’s
parliament and cabinet have repeatedly attempted to amend Article 136 (b),
which previous parliaments overturned and reinstated several times.[188] Parliament
passed a law on April 18, 2011 repealing article 136(b), but judges told Human
Rights Watch that executive officials continued to invoke the article to
prevent prosecutions of abusive security officers.[189] Another
judge told Human Rights Watch that Article 111 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure of the Internal Security Forces, the regulations that govern
prosecution of security forces, prevents investigative judges from initiating
any legal procedures against Interior Ministry employees without the approval
of the minister of interior himself.[190]
This law has been a major obstacle to courts holding security officers
accountable for abuses, the judge said.[191]

Article 2(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) requires states parties to ensure an “effective
remedy” for persons whose rights have been violated.[192]
Article 9(5) of the covenant provides a right to compensation for any victim of
unlawful arrest or detention.[193]

Another article of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the
Internal Security Forces grants security forces for whom security officers work
the sole authority to arrest an officer accused of a crime, shielding officers
from arrest by any authority other than the branch of the security forces that employs
them.[194]

A judge described how laws undermine accountability:

If a detainee was exposed to torture, and the judge notices
marks on the body, the judge should send the detainee to forensics to be
examined, and a medical report should be produced. Normally, the investigative
judge should do this. If the detainee is found to have been tortured or abused,
Iraqi law should punish the interrogator, and the suspect can sue them. In
reality, however, these procedures are not very effective, because when we
initiate legal proceedings against an interrogator, it goes to those in charge
of the security forces of which they are a member. The security forces refuse
to respond to us. No approval will be given from the security forces for any
procedures against their own members. Instead, the judge will be accused of
collaborating with terrorists. If I wanted to request investigation of an
interrogator, for example, the Ministry of Interior or Defense usually does not
respond. No legal procedures can be made by a court unless approved by the interior
or defense minister.[195]

The laws mean that “interrogators are really always
safe from prosecution or even reprimand,” one judge noted.[196]

While some judges are complicit in violations of
suspects’ due process rights, others, as noted, have credible fears for their
physical safety if they reported abuses.

Corruption and Collusion between Judges and Security
Officers

Officials, lawyers, activists, and detainees said that
corruption between lawyers, security officers, and judges is so
institutionalized that the outcome of particular cases almost always depends on
the defendant’s ability to pay bribes.[197] Even
then, payment of a bribe does not guarantee release. In several instances, the
families of women paid sums demanded to secure their release, and they remained
in detention.

Fourteen people told Human Rights Watch that investigating
officers demanded money for release of their family members, and that the
officers passed a portion of this money to judges, who thus had an incentive to
refuse to release women whose families have not paid, even women against whom
there is no evidence and who have not confessed.[198]

The husband and children of a woman who had been unlawfully
detained approached Human Rights Watch in December 2012 with information about
her case, but asked Human Rights Watch not to report it until the end of
negotiations between their lawyer and the detaining officers, who had demanded
$5000 for her release. The detained woman’s husband said, “The
shortest and easiest way to get her back is through a bribe.”[199]
After the family paid part of the amount demanded, the “Committee of the Wise”
intervened and facilitated authorities’ release of the woman, who authorities
never formally charged.

In 13 cases documented in this report, security officials
waited far longer than the time mandated by the Code of Criminal Procedure to
bring women before investigative judges.[200] According
to the testimony provided by these women and by lawyers representing women, once
detained women are taken before investigative judges, judges do not provide the
protections afforded under Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure or
constitution.

A majority of the women detainees whom Human Rights Watch
interviewed said that investigative judges ordered their prolonged detention or
charged them either without evidence or solely on the basis of coerced
confessions. Several women reported that investigative judges ignored their
complaints of abuse during interrogation and evidence that they confessed under
torture.

One former judge told
Human Rights Watch that investigative judges regularly pre-dated arrest
warrants: “I recently saw a judge standing at his desk signing warrant
after warrant without even looking at them—there must have been hundreds
of warrants. Another investigative judge signed a warrant that was dated a week
before. The basis of detention was article 4, but the specific charge was [that
the person to be arrested was a] ‘son of a dog.’”[201]

I knew of a case where [the detainee had] a medical report
saying there was “75 percent chance he was tortured” and there was
no evidence against the detainee whatsoever [for the charges], but he was
convicted. One investigator in Karkh told me, “I like to torture.”[202]

Government officials, parliamentarians, lawyers, and judges
told Human Rights Watch that investigative judges had accepted bribes from
security officers to prolong women’s detentions or the conditions of
their release.

The Iraqi Code of Criminal Procedure allows for the use of
secret informant testimony as a basis for arrest warrants and convictions.[204] The
vagueness of the provisions provide detainees and their lawyers no basis to
challenge secret informant testimony.[205]

The use of secret
informant testimony is especially prevalent in cases where detainees are
accused of terrorism under article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, according to
detainees and their lawyers.

A person who works
closely with the prime minister’s office and has intimate knowledge of
the judicial process told Human Rights Watch that the use of secret informants
was “institutionalized.”[206]
He described four kinds of secret informants: those who participate in crimes,
such as members of armed groups who want to avoid a jail term and from whom a
judge requests “something in return”; those who provide testimony
against someone in a tribal dispute; those who provide information against
others of a different sect; and those who genuinely have information about a
crime. Frequently, he said, informants are themselves implicated in crimes and
investigative judges blackmail them to provide needed testimony.

In February 2013, Shahristani told Human Rights Watch that
“even before the protests started,” courts no longer accepted
secret informant testimony without supporting evidence.[207]
He said that the government was taking steps to provide accountability for
informants who had provided false testimony, and gave Human Rights Watch a list
of 20 persons he said had been convicted of providing false testimony as secret
informants. He was unable to say whether the cases of persons these informants
provided testimony against had been overturned.

On April 7, 2013, the cabinet announced it had approved
amendments to laws governing the use of secret informants, which then needed parliamentary
approval to become law. As of late December 2013 parliament had not approved
the amendments. In May, a parliamentarian told Human Rights Watch that the
amendments were not on the parliamentary schedule and that he believed the
“percent chance of the amendments getting passed is zero.”[208]
Another parliamentarian from Maliki’s Dawa party told Human Rights Watch
that “these amendments will stay in the drawer.”[209]

In April, Shahristani dismissed the importance of
parliament’s passing proposed amendments to Iraq’s Code of Criminal
Procedure that would limit use of secret informants, denying that the proposed
amendments were a response to “the judiciary not carrying out its
duty.”[210]

Judges insist they have
never sentenced anyone based on a secret informant. They tell us they have
never convicted anyone based on confessions alone. These amendments are not an
acknowledgment that sentences have been passed on the basis of false evidence
by a secret informant, or confessions based on torture. When he suggested these
amendments, [Justice Minister] Shimmari just said since judges already are
acting this way, why not amend the law so that no judge can deviate from it in
the future.[211]

Sources told Human Rights Watch that security forces
continue to use secret informants to make new arrests.[212]
A high-level government official told Human Rights Watch in February that
security forces still have a $1 million budget for secret informants, and that
only secret informants who could “cause a political crisis” had
been deactivated, meaning those implicated in the arrests in December 2011 of
high-profile Sunni politicians Tariq al-Hashimi and of bodyguards of Rafi
Essawi in December 2012.[213]

On May 8,
Shahristani’s office gave Human Rights Watch the text of amendments to
articles 109 and 213 of Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure governing
security forces’ and courts’ use of secret informant testimony to
detain and convict. The amendments would require the release of a suspect whose
detention was based on the testimony of an informant whose identity is not
known, or whose detention is based on secret informant testimony without
further supporting evidence (article 109).[214] The amendments make no mention of penalties for
judges or security officials who ignore the provisions, nor provide detainees a
right to sue if courts or security officials violate their rights under the
amendment.[215]

Even if the parliament passes the amendments into law, their
application will be difficult. “The number of terrorism [detainees] in
Iraq now is huge,” said a former judge who now serves on
parliament’s legal committee and is a member of the parliamentary “Committee
of Five,” appointed by Maliki to receive protesters’ demands and
negotiate between protesters, parliament and ministers.[216]
“Ninety percent of terrorism cases are based on secret informant
testimony,” he said. “Our committee right now is looking for ways
to get people out, but the problem is that we really don’t know who is
innocent and who is guilty because there is no evidence—we have nothing
against them but secret informant testimony or a confession.”[217]

Because the Code of Criminal Procedure allows the use of
secret informant testimony, it is available to judges issuing warrants or
convictions in any criminal case.[218]
A high-ranking member of the Ahrar party, the Sadrist political wing, told
Human Rights Watch that half of the 4,000 detainees who follow Muqtada al-Sadr,
an Islamic political leader and head of the Mehdi Army, a Shia militia that
Sadr has said is no longer militarily active, are detained on the basis of
secret informant testimony, and claimed that “we have informants in court
who give us the names and identification numbers of secret informants. We had
insiders investigate the identities of the secret informants and found they do
not exist—their names and identity numbers are made up.”[219]

Coerced Confessions

In 2012, Human Rights Watch documentedsecurity forces’ practice of conducting
abusive interrogations in facilities outside the authority of the Justice Ministry
to obtain coerced confessions.[220] Detainees
and their families told Human Rights Watch that security forces threaten
detainees that if they refuse to confess to crimes or to pay bribes, or if they
speak publicly about abuse, they will “make sure” that the detainee
ends up on death row.[221]

On April 22, ambassadors in Baghdad of European Union member
states expressed their alarm that despite the Iraqi government’s stated
intention to “review the sentences of many convicted prisoners … executions
have continued at the same time,” despite “an excessive reliance on
confessions to secure convictions, and...evidence that those confessions are
sometimes given under duress.”[222]

As the statements detailed above describe, security officers
threaten and torture women in order to induce them to sign or fingerprint
prepared confessions that in some cases they cannot read because they are
illiterate or because officers do not give them opportunity to do so. In nine cases,
women told Human Rights Watch they were forced to sign or fingerprint blank
pieces of paper. Five women said that interrogating officers forced them to
sign or fingerprint what they described as “stacks” or
“piles” of papers, often forcing them to sign several days in a
row.

VII. International Legal Protections for Detainees

International Standards on Women’s
Detention

International human rights laws provide protections to
female prisoners even where these rights are not guaranteed under Iraqi law.
Iraq ratified the principal international treaty that protects the human rights
of prisoners, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
in 1971;[223]
and acceded to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or
Degrading Treatment and Punishment (Convention against Torture) in 2011.[224]
In addition, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
Prisoners,[225]
the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners,[226]
and the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of
Detention or Imprisonment provide authoritative guidance for interpreting the
more general rules of the ICCPR and Convention against Torture.[227]

These laws contain protections that clearly apply to
custodial abuse. Under the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture, state
parties are obligated to ensure that no one is subjected to torture or to
cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment. These treaties and the Standard
Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners further require states to ensure
that those who engage in such abuse are appropriately punished and that
individuals seeking to complain about such ill-treatment are provided with an
effective remedy. Article 17 of the ICCPR protects all individuals against
arbitrary interference with their privacy, and the Standard Minimum Rules
specify that the privacy of female prisoners should be respected by male
corrections staff.

Article 13 of the Convention against Torture requires Iraq
to ensure that a person alleging she was tortured or ill-treated has the right
to complain,[228]
as does Article 3 of the ICCPR, which requires an effective remedy for all
rights contained in the convention. As noted above, the authoritative Standard
Minimum Rules provide a more detailed structure to protect this right and to
ensure that prisoners are able to gain access to a complaint mechanism.[229]

The ICCPR and torture convention obligate Iraq to provide
and ensure that certain remedies are available to those prisoners alleging acts
of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Human
Rights Committee, the body of international experts charged with interpreting
the ICCPR, has ruled that the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment or punishment in article 7 carries with it a positive
obligation for state parties to investigate complaints of ill-treatment
effectively, punish those found guilty, and provide remedies to the victim,
including monetary compensation and “holistic” rehabilitation,
including “medical and psychological care as well as legal and social
services.”[230]

Article 13 of the Convention against Torture requires that
steps be taken to protect the complainant and her witnesses from all
ill-treatment or intimidation in retaliation for filing a complaint or
providing information.[231]

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

Although CEDAW does not specifically address the rights of
women in prison, the CEDAW committee has interpreted its provisions widely to
apply to detained women.[232]Women in prison enjoy the same rights not to be subjected to
gender-based discrimination as other women.

The Human Rights Committee has affirmed that: “Persons
deprived of their liberty enjoy all the rights set forth in [CEDAW], subject to
the restrictions that are unavoidable in a closed environment.”[233]
Articles 2 and 3 of CEDAW require states to eliminate gender-based violence, as
detailed in the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women’s General Recommendation 193.

The CEDAW Committee has interpreted the convention to
incorporate standards from the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
Prisoners.[234]The Committee stated that CEDAW’s article 3, which requires
states to eliminate gender-based violence, includes gender-based violence
against detained women.[235]Accordingly, the Committee stated that “women prisoners
should be attended and supervised by women officers.”[236]

Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners
The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners establish
standards to which all UN member states should adhere in protecting the rights
of women in detention.[237] Principle
6 (1) requires that the standards be applied impartially, without
“discrimination on grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion,
political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other
status;” principle 8 (a) requires that men and women “be detained
in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women
the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate;”
and principle 53 states that “(1) In an institution for both men and
women, the part of the institution set aside for women shall be under the
authority of a responsible woman officer who shall have the custody of the keys
of all that part of the institution, (2) No male member of the staff shall
enter the part of the institution set aside for women unless accompanied by a
woman officer, (3) Women prisoners shall be attended and supervised only by
women officers.”[238]

The Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons
under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment
The United Nations General Assembly’s principles on protection of
detained persons explicitly requires that all principles be applied
“without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language,
religion or religious belief, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or
social origin, property, birth or other status” (principle 5 (1)).[239]

Comments by the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
In a report on custodial violence, the special rapporteur on violence against
women identified custodial violence against women as “a particularly
egregious violation of a woman’s human rights” and concluded
“the State, when it assumes responsibility for an individual, whether
such responsibility is undertaken for punitive or rehabilitative reasons, has
heightened responsibility for the individual within its custody.”[240]

International Standards on Children in Detention
Facilities
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which Iraq ratified in 1989,
provides protections for children who are incarcerated with their mothers.
Article 9 (1) requires states to “ensure that a child shall not be
separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent
authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable
law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of
the child.”[241]
Where children are separated from their parents due to detention or
imprisonment of the parent, states are required to “provide the parents,
the child or, if appropriate, another member of the family with the essential
information concerning the whereabouts of the absent member(s) of the family
unless the provision of the information would be detrimental to the well-being
of the child” and to “ensure that the submission of such a request
shall of itself entail no adverse consequences for the person(s)
concerned” (article 9 [4]).

The CRC’s article 37 prohibits subjecting children to
torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; prohibits
deprivation of a child’s liberty “unlawfully or arbitrarily,”
and requires the separation of children deprived of liberty from adults
“unless it is considered in the child's best interest not to do so, and
shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through
correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances.”[242]

International Standards Prohibiting Arbitrary Arrest and
Detention
The ICCPR prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention and requires that a detained
person must be brought promptly before a judge or other independent and
impartial judicial officer (article 9).[243]
Article 17 of the ICCPR protects all individuals against arbitrary interference
with their privacy, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
Prisoners specify that the privacy of female prisoners should be respected by
male corrections staff.[244]

Iraq became party to the International Convention for the
Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in November 2010. Under
Article 17 of the convention, “No one shall be held in secret
detention.” The convention mandates that “any person deprived of
liberty shall be held solely in officially recognized and supervised places of
deprivation of liberty.” Human Rights Watch interviewed three girls and
seven women who were detained in their homes or other officially unrecognized
places of detention.[245]

International Standards Prohibiting Torture
The prohibition against torture and other mistreatment is a longstanding and
fundamental norm of customary international law.

The ICCPR requires that detainees be treated with respect
for their “inherent dignity,” and article 7 mandates that detainees
shall “not be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.”[246]

Similar prohibitions are found in the Convention against
Torture, which specifically prohibits using as evidence in any proceeding
“any statement which is established to have been made as a result of
torture.”[247]

The Committee Against Torture expressed “great concern
at the reported practice of holding relatives of alleged criminals, including
children and the elderly, as hostages, sometimes for years at a time, to compel
the alleged criminals to surrender themselves to the police,” emphasizing
that “such practice is a violation of the Convention.”[248]

International Standards on Accountability for Torture

Article 2(3) of the ICCPR requires states parties to ensure
an “effective remedy” for persons whose Covenant rights have been violated.
The Human Rights Committee, in its authoritative General Comment on article 2,
states there is a “general obligation to investigate allegations of
violations promptly, thoroughly and effectively through independent and
impartial bodies” and that “failure by a State Party to investigate
allegations of violations could in and of itself give rise to a separate breach
of the Covenant.”[249]
The Committee also stated that where such investigations “reveal
violations of certain Covenant rights, States Parties must ensure that those
responsible are brought to justice. As with failure to investigate, failure to
bring to justice perpetrators of such violations could in and of itself give
rise to a separate breach of the Covenant.” It added that the obligations
to investigate and prosecute “arise notably in respect of those
violations recognized as criminal under either domestic or international law,
such…as torture and summary and arbitrary killing.”[250]

Article 12 of the Convention against Torture requires states
parties to “ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and
impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an
act of torture has been committed in any territory under its
jurisdiction.”

Article 12 of the Convention against Torture requires states
parties to “ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and
impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an
act of torture has been committed in any territory under its
jurisdiction” and requires criminalization of complicity or participation
in torture (art 4).[251]
Iraq’s Penal Code provides a punishment of “imprisonment or penal
servitude” “[a]ny public official or agent who tortures or orders
the torture of an accused, witness or informant in order to compel him to
confess to the commission of an offence or to make a statement or provide
information about such offence or to withhold information.”[252]

International Standards on Fair Trials and the Right to
CounselThe presumption of innocence constitutes a
basic principle of fair trial standards and is guaranteed in the Iraqi
Constitution (article 19) and in international law (ICCPR, article 14[2]).

The United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers
requires giving defendants prompt access to a lawyer no later than 48 hours
after arrest.[253]
The Basic Principles state that detainees shall have “adequate
opportunities, time and facilities to be visited by and to communicate and
consult with a lawyer, without delay, interception or censorship and in full
confidentiality. Such consultations may be within sight, but not within the
hearing, of law enforcement officials.”[254]

International Standards on Prisoners’ Rights in
Detention
The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (1955) requires
that the accused be allowed to inform his or her family of his detention
immediately, and given reasonable facilities to communicate with her family
(article 92). The UN Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any
Form of Detention or Imprisonment (1988) affirms the right of the detainee to
receive family visits and communicate with the outside world (principle 19).

Recommendations

To the Government of Iraq

To the Justice, Interior, and Health Ministries

·Acknowledge
that the practice of charging women with al-tasattur, or “covering
up” for husbands’ alleged crimes, is a form of arbitrary or
collective punishment;

·Ensure that
female officers are present at all times during arrest, transfer, and
interrogation of women detainees; and that supervision is carried out by
appropriately trained female staff in all facilities where women detainees and
prisoners are held;

·Train
corrections officials charged with guarding women in custody, including by
providing information concerning the impact of previous sexual abuse and train
corrections officers working in women’s prisons on the obligation to
refrain from sexual contact, verbal degradation, or privacy violations;

·Provide
detainees and prisoners with written regulations governing their treatment and
authorized methods of seeking information and making complaints. If the
prisoner is illiterate, provide such information orally;

·Ensure the
protection of the dignity and privacy as well as the physical and psychological
safety of women detainees, including adequate accommodation and materials
required to meet women’s specific hygiene needs;

·Ensure
access to gender-specific health care for women detainees;

·Provide
safeguards to protect women detainees from all forms of abuse, including gender-specific
abuse, and ensure that women detainees are searched and supervised by properly
trained women staff;

·Provide
sexual assault screenings and provide women access to reproductive health care,
post-rape care; and proper treatment of women who are pregnant; and

·Implement
proper forensic examinations of women prior to admission to any detention
facility. If evidence of rape is found, provide immediate treatment and
accountability for the perpetrator.

·Acknowledge
the scope of the problem of security force abuses in Iraq, including illegal
and mass arrests, torture and ill-treatment against women;

·End the practice
of targeting of suspects’ female family members;

·Implement a
policy of zero tolerance for all forms of torture and inhuman or degrading
treatment, especially sexual abuse;

·Issue and
publicize directives stating that the government will not tolerate illegal
arrests, torture, and other ill-treatment by law enforcement officials, will
promptly investigate reports of illegal arrests, torture and ill-treatment, and
will hold accountable those responsible;

·Ensure that
security services conduct arrests only with warrants or to prevent ongoing or
imminent crimes;

·Direct the
Office of the General Prosecutor to investigate all torture allegations against
law enforcement officials, regardless of rank or superior officer approval, and
whether or not the victim or family has formally filed a complaint;

·Initiate
public-outreach campaigns to inform Iraqis of their rights during arrest and detention,
and ensure they address the particular needs of women;

·Make public
the location of all detention facilities, including those operated by the Defense
Ministry and irregular detention facilities, and the number of women detained
in each;

·Close all secret
detention facilities; ensure that forces of the interior and defense
ministries, and forces that answer directly to the prime minister, only detain
individuals in regular recognized detention facilities;

·Investigate
all allegations of sexual abuse, torture and ill-treatment, and institute
disciplinary measures or criminal prosecution, as appropriate, against
officials at all levels who are responsible for perpetrating or condoning the
abuse of detainees;

·Amend
articles 109 and 213 of Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure to eliminate
the use of secret informant testimony entirely; provide penalties for judges or
security officials who continue to use secret informant testimony; and provide
detainees a right to sue if courts or security officials use secret informant
testimony against them;

·Modernize
the Justice Ministry’s record-keeping and make records of prisoners,
their locations, sentences and time served public;

·Allow
defendants to pursue a meaningful defense and challenge evidence against them;

·Direct all
judges and security ministries that evidence, and not confessions, is the
primary basis for all criminal convictions, including where suspects are
charged with terrorism;

·Announce a
zero tolerance policy for corruption including soliciting bribes from detainees
to be released;

·Investigate
judges’ complaints of harassment by government officials and outside
parties and provide judges and lawyers security protection;

·Charge or
order the release of all detainees, and ensure that release orders are
executed;

·Cease the
waiting period (aadem matloubeyya) procedure (the requirement that the Interior
Ministry conduct a search for outstanding warrants against individuals ordered
released); and

·Allow trial
observations by local and international NGOs.

To the International Donor Community

·Condition
the provision of aid, especially arms and training to Iraqi security forces, on
Iraq’s fulfillment of its obligations under humanitarian treaties it has
signed;

·Cease
assistance to Iraq’s police, intelligence and other security forces, and
counterterrorism assistance until Iraq demonstrates meaningful progress toward
compliance with international human rights standards in the criminal justice
system and security forces; and

To the United States Government

·Provide
detailed information about prisoners the US transferred to Iraqi custody,
including women and children, including to Iraqi forces and detention centers
where the US knew or should have known they could be at risk of torture;

·Cease
cooperation by the CIA and other US or US-affiliated intelligence and security
personnel with Iraqi security forces about which there are credible allegations
of abuse, especially the Counterterrorism Service (CTS), the Baghdad Brigade,
and other police and army brigades that circumvent normal chain of command and
answer directly to the prime minister.

Acknowledgments

Erin Evers, researcher in the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) Division of Human Rights Watch, authored this report.

Human Rights Watch wishes to thank the people who were
instrumental in organizing the mission and conducting follow-up research in
Iraq, and who provided essential logistical support, without which it would
have been impossible to complete this research.

Human Rights watch also thanks the civil society
organizations who provided essential support; former employees in the Human
Rights and Defense ministries; the staff of the Justice, Defense, Interior and
Human Rights ministries for their assistance in facilitating Human Rights
Watch's research missions; and the numerous lawyers, judges, officials and,
most importantly, detainees and prisoners who spoke to Human Rights Watch
despite the significant risks they incurred to do so.

[3]
"Iraq: Wikileaks Documents Describe Torture of Detainees," Human
Rights Watch news release, October 23, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/10/24/iraq-wikileaks-documents-describe-torture-detainees
(discussing cables released in October 2010 by Wikileaks, mostly authored by
low-ranking US officers in the field between 2004 and 2009).

[11] See International
Crisis Group, “Loose Ends: Iraq’s Security Forces Between U.S.
Drawdown and Withdrawal,” October 26, 2010, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/iraq-iran-gulf/iraq/099-loose-ends-iraqs-security-forces-between-us-drawdown-and-withdrawal.aspx
(accessed October 20, 2013); Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The
Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to
Barack Obama (New York: Pantheon Books, Random House, 2012).

[12] United Nations
Security Council, Resolution 1546 (2004), S/Res/2004, June 8, 2004, http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1546(2004
(accessed December 23, 2013); “UN: Tell US to End Illegal Detention
Procedures in Iraq: US-Led Force Holds Thousands Without Due Process,”
Human Rights Watch news release, August 27, 2008, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/04/27/un-tell-us-end-illegal-detention-practices-iraq.
The UK also claimed that, under UN Security Council Resolution 1546, British
troops in Iraq had the right to indefinitely detain people without charge. In Case
of Al Jedda v. United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights
found tis practice to be arbitrary detention in violation of the European
Convention of Human Rights, article 5 § 1. Case of Al Jedda v. United
Kingdom, No. 27021/08, July 7, 2007, http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx#{"dmdocnumber":["887954"],"itemid":["001-105612"]}
(accessed November 21, 2013).

A former judge and professor of law told
Human Rights Watch in May that the ministry delayed publishing the report for
five months due to its inclusion of this information.

[16]
Human Rights Watch interview with international NGO representative [name
withheld], Baghdad, December 21, 2012, discussing his conversation with a
security official he had in the course of his work monitoring detention
facilities. The security officer asked him, “If we don’t torture
them, how are we going to get them to confess?”; Human Rights Watch
interview with criminal defense lawyer (name withheld), Baghdad, February 21,
2012.

[18]
United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), “Report on Human
Rights in Iraq, July – December 2012,” June 2013,
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_July-December2012Report.pdf
(accessed October 20, 2013). (stating: “In contrast to facilities under
the authority of the MoJ, UNAMI continued to receive frequent reports from
current and former detainees or their relatives and associates alleging
incidents of arbitrary arrest, particularly in connection with the Anti-Terrorism
Law, and subsequent denial of due process, as well as abuse, including torture
and other forms of mistreatment. Nearly all such allegations concerned
pre-trial detainees held in detention facilities under the authority of the
Ministry of Interior … or the Counter-Terrorism Directorate... In
UNAMI’s view, many of the problems faced by Iraq’s detention
facilities and prisons are partly due to the fact that prisons and detention
centres are run by a range of Ministries and security agencies, with little coordinated
oversight or accountability. Responsibility is split between the MoJ, MoI,
Ministry of Defence … and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs
… while security for prisons and detentions centres is often in the hands
of police or military units. Assurances by the GoI that more uniform oversight
of detention facilities will be introduced have yet to be implemented. Reliance
by the courts on confessions also contributes to a culture where torture and
abuse of detainees are seen by some officials as legitimate means to secure
convictions, particularly in the case of persons detained under the
Anti-Terrorism Law.”); see also Human Rights Watch, At A Crossroads.

[20] UNAMI,
“Report on Human Rights in Iraq, July – December 2012,” June
2013,
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_July-December2012Report.pdf
(accessed October 20, 2013) (stating: “UNAMI remains concerned about
respect for the rights and the status of women in Iraq, in particular in regard
to so-called ‘honour’ crimes, trafficking and domestic violence,”
although UNAMI could not obtain accurate statistics of “High rates of
domestic and other forms of violence … given the conservative nature of
Iraqi society and the unwillingness or inability of victims or family members
to report incidents to the police or other authorities.”).

[23] “Background
on Women's Status in Iraq Prior to the Fall of the Saddam Hussein Government,”
Human Rights Watch, November 2003, http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/wrd/iraq-women.htm;
see also Freedom House, Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa:
Citizenship and Justice, “Iraq” , Sazeema Nazir and Leigh Tomppert,
eds., Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005, p. 86, (stating:
“Until the mid-1980s, women were guaranteed equal access to education and
employment opportunities under the Ba’ath regime; Iraqi women achieved
significant strides in the political, economic, and educations
spheres.”).

[24]
Human Rights Watch, At a Crossroads (citing The Compulsory Education Law
118/1976, which stated that education is compulsory and free of charge for
children of both sexes from six to ten years of age, and girls were free to
leave school thereafter with the approval of their parents or guardians).

[25]
UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, “Arab Women in ESCWA
Member States,” E/ESCWA/STAT/1994/17, 1994, p. 88.

[26]
Ibid. (stating that “All illiterate persons between the ages fifteen and
forty-five had to attend classes at local "literacy centers,” and
citing articles 80-89 of the Unified Labor Code, Law 81/1987, which established
"protections of working women" and art. 4, which established the
right to equal pay; the Maternal Law of 1971; and changes to the personal
status law in 1978).

[27]
Sami Zubaida, "The Rise and Fall of Civil Society in Iraq," Open
Democracy, February 5, 2003, http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-iraqwarquestions/article_953.jsp
(accessed October 23, 2013.)

[28]
UN Commission on Human Rights, "Report of the Special Rapporteur on
Violence against Women," E/CN.4/2002/83, January 31, 2002.

[32]
Human Rights Watch interview with Ibtihal Ahmad, Site 4 detention facility,
Baghdad, February 28, 2013. The names of all detainees quoted in this report
have been changed to protect their security and avoid potential retaliation.

[41] International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted December 16, 1966, G.A.
Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966),
999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force March 23, 1976. ratified by Iraq on Jan.
25, 1971, art. 9. In its General Comment on Article 4 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (concerning states of emergency), the UN
Human Rights Committee stated that state parties may “in no
circumstances” invoke a state of emergency “as justification for
acting in violation of humanitarian law or peremptory norms of international
law, for instance … by imposing collective punishments.” UN Human
Rights Committee, General Comment No. 29 (Article 4 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

[52]
Iraq Code of Criminal Procedure, Law No. 23 of 1971, article 109, “(A) If
the person arrested is accused of an offence punishable by a period of
detention exceeding 3 years or by imprisonment for a term of years or life
imprisonment, the judge may order that he be held for a period of no more 15
days on each occasion or order his release on a pledge with or without bail
from a guarantor. . . .(B) If the person arrested is accused of an offence
punishable by death the period stipulated in sub-paragraph A may be extended
for as long as necessary for the investigation to proceed until the
investigative judge or criminal court issues a decision on the case on
completion of the preliminary or judicial investigation or the trial.”

[58] Human Rights
Watch interview with Minister of Justice Hassan al-Shimmari, Baghdad, February
14, 2013; Human Rights Watch interviews with Deputy Prime Minister Hussein
al-Shahristani, Baghdad, February 13, 2013 and April 29, 2013. The detention of
women in irregular facilities was confirmed by an inspector in the human
rights directorate of a security ministry, Human Rights Watch Interview with
security ministry inspector (name withheld), Baghdad, February 23 2013 (stating
that in the course of his inspections of detention facilities, he has
“documented many terrible things” but that they would “never
go anywhere” because of obstruction by his superiors or because of
judges’ failure to hear the cases or to issue judgments against those
cases they do hear); and by Aqil Tarahy, Inspector General of the Interior
Ministry (Human Rights Watch interview with Aqil Tarahy, Inspector General of
the Interior Ministry, Baghdad, February 21, 2013) and Human Rights Minister
Muhammad Shia Sudani (Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad Shia Sudani,
Ministry of Human Rights, Baghdad, December 20 2012 and February 18, 2013.)

[61]
Human Rights Watch interviews with detainees in Justice Ministry facilities and
former detainees in facilities run by the Interior and Defense ministries
indicate that detainees are frequently subjected to illegally prolonged
detentions. UNAMI’s July – December 2012 Human Rights report
documented illegal pretrial detentions and failure to release detainees,
particularly in facilities “outside the authority and responsibility of
the MoJ.” UNAMI, “Report on Human Rights in Iraq, July –
December 2012,” June 2013,
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_July-December2012Report.pdf
(accessed October 20, 2013) (stating: “Detainees are frequently held for
prolonged periods in pre-trial detention, often without access to legal
counsel, owing to lack of resources for prosecutors or courts and a reluctance
to utilise bail provisions where appropriate. UNAMI also continued to receive
sporadic reports that authorities at times failed to release detainees as
ordered by the courts at the conclusion of judicial investigations or trials,
or after sentences had been served.”).

[62]Human Rights Watch interview with Minister of
State for National Reconciliation Amer Khuzaie, Baghdad, February 26, 2013.

[64]
Iraq Code of Criminal Procedure, Law No. 23 of 1971, art. 115 (stating
“When the pledge, bail or cash sum is submitted, the accused is released
if he is not being held for another offence); art. 128 E (stating, “A
detainee is released when a verdict of not-guilty, diminished responsibility,
release or rejection of the complaint is issued, as long as there is no other
legal reason for his detention).

[74]
Iraq Penal Code, Law No. 111 of 1969, art. 247 (stating “Any person who
is obliged by law to notify a public agent of a matter or matters known to him
and who willfully refrains from doing so in the prescribed manner or at the
time stipulated by law is punishable by detention or a fine. The same penalty
applies to any public agent in charge of the investigation or prevention of an
offence who neglects to report an offence that is brought to his attention.
This is unless an action is brought as a result of a complaint or the offender
is the spouse, ancestor, descendant, brother or sister of that public agent or
his spouse's ancestor, descendant, brother or sister or any relative by
marriage of such persons.”).

[90] Israa’s
description of this device conforms to other witness testimony of an instrument
that security forces call the “donkey” and use to beat detainees.
See Ruqaya Abbas Ahmad Jaafari and Safaa Abdelrahim Ahmad, below.

[91] Israa’s
description of the device used to electrocute her conforms to other witness
testimony about security forces’ procedures for electrocuting detainees.
See Ruqaya Abbas Ahmad Jaafari and Safaa Abdelrahim Ahmad; Fatima Hussein,
below.

[92] Institute
of Forensic Medicine, Ministry of Health of Iraq, Medical report No. 7231
t/a/4/T, March 11, 2010 (preparing doctor’s name illegible). The
report also describes an “infection” on the front of her right leg
and says that the doctor cannot date the injury or determine what caused it.

[93]
The Mahdi Army is a Shia militia affiliated with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Mahdi
Army members were active participants in Iraq’s civil war, fighting Sunni
groups either as members of the militia or under the guise of serving in the
Iraqi security forces.

[105]
Article 154 of Iraq’s Code of Criminal Procedure allows the prime
minister to issue a special pardon of convicted prisoners if the complainant
(the victim or victim’s representative) is willing to dismiss charges
against the accused person. Where the complainant is “unknown,” as
is the case in all cases based on secret informant testimony, accused persons
are ineligible for pardon because there is no complainant to officially dismiss
the complaint.

[111]
UNAMI Report on Human Rights in Iraq: July – December 2012, June 2013,
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_July-December2012Report.pdf,
pp. 6 – 7 (stating: “The MoJ has embarked on a reorganization of
its prisons throughout Iraq…Despite these improvements, some prisons
visited by UNAMI under the authority of the MoJ remain overcrowded and suffer
from poor infrastructure); “Report on Women Prisoners and the Violations
to which They are Exposed,” Human Rights Committee of the Iraqi Council
of Representatives [Parliament] Report No. LH652, December 3, 2012; Iraq
Ministry of Human Rights, “Annual Report on Conditions in Prisons and
Detention Facilities, 2012,” http://www.humanrights.gov.iq/PageViewer.aspx?id=159
(accessed May 23, 2013).

[112]
Human Rights Watch interview with Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani,
Baghdad, February 14, 2013. Shahristani said that his committee, tasked with responding
to protestors’ demands, “realized this was happening, and we told
the officials in those ministries, no, it’s better to have them in
overcrowded prisons than held illegally, and so we transferred them.”

[114]
Human Rights Watch interview with Ibtihal, warden of Site 4 detention facility,
Baghdad, February 28, 2013. A parliamentary Human Rights Committee report
states that the facility was designed to hold 350 detainees. Human Rights
Committee of the Iraqi Council of Representatives [Parliament] Report No.
LH652, December 3, 2012.

[119]
Human Rights Watch interview with Nour, Shaaba Khamsa detention facility,
Baghdad, March 1, 2013. The warden of the male death row facility the
overcrowding problem had reached overwhelming proportions. A staff member of a
foreign embassy, who requested anonymity because he does not have authority to
speak on the subject said that he had visited the facility and that, while
there was officially space for 300 prisoners, the death row currently held 730
prisoners.

[154]
Human Rights Watch interview with (name withheld), former government employee,
Baghdad, February 18, 2013. See also “Iraq: Detainees Describe Torture in
Secret Jail,” Human Rights Watch news release, April 27, 2010,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/04/27/iraq-detainees-describe-torture-secret-jail
(accessed May 20, 2013); “Iraq: Secret Jail Uncovered in Baghdad,”
February 1, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/02/01/iraq-secret-jail-uncovered-baghdad;
Ned Parker, “The Iraq We Left Behind: Welcome to the World’s Next
Failed State,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 91 No. 2 March/April 2012, at 11
(“any investigator from the Human Rights Ministry or any official from
any other government office who is brave enough to try to probe the jails would
face immediate persecution. Three investigators have already fled the country,
and those remaining are terrified. One former Iraqi official who worked on
human rights issues and left the country last year because he was afraid for
his safety told me that Maliki and the Dawa Party were essentially free to
carry out whatever they liked in their jails.”).

[164] Human
Rights Watch interview with Ibtihal, Site 4 detention facility, Baghdad, February
28, 2013. The warden referred to the detainees as “girls,” but all
detainees in Site 4 are women over the age of 18.

[171] Joost
Hiltermann, “Iraq: What Remains,” Middle East Report No. 266,
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer266/iraq-what-remains (accessed July 13, 2013)
(stating: “Among the relics of the occupation one would be hard put,
however, to find strong evidence of the democratic system the Bush administration
vowed to install. Institutions bearing names suggestive of transparency and
accountability -- the Council of Representatives, the Integrity Commission, the
Supreme Court, inspectors general -- exist but whatever independent powers they
once were invested with appear to be draining away, leaving behind empty shells
with operations strong on procedure but devoid of meaningful outcomes….
Maliki has adroitly used his almost seven years in power, but especially the
past two years, to gut nascent independent institutions of their powers and
bring them under his direct control.”); “Failing Oversight:
Iraq’s Unchecked Government,” International Crisis Group, Middle
East Report No. 113, September 26, 2011,
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/iraq-iran-gulf/iraq/113-failing-oversight-iraqs-unchecked-government.aspx
(accessed Jul. 13, 2013) (stating: “One of the major causes of
[Iraq’s] depressing state of affairs is the state’s failing
oversight framework, which has allowed successive governments to operate
unchecked. The 2005 constitution and the existing legal framework require a
number of institutions – the Board of Supreme Audit, the Integrity
Commission, the Inspectors General, parliament and the courts – to
monitor government operations. Yet, none of these institutions has been able to
assert itself in the face of government interference, intransigence and
manipulation, a deficient legal framework and ongoing threats of
violence.”).

[173] YouTube
video of Maliki’s speech at Lawyer’s Syndicate Conference, October
5, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vUgAgd3OmZs
(accessed July 14, 2013), captioned “Maliki threatens any lawyer who
represents someone accused of terrorism.” In the video Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki states: “I praise and congratulate the lawyers who take a
firm stand and refuse to represent terrorists, criminals and murderers. But
sadly, there are still some lawyers remaining who will stand in front of a
judge and represent a murderer or criminal, as happened in the case of the
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.”

[179] Ibid.
This official gave specific examples to Human Rights Watch about each of these
judges’ violations: “[Name withheld] tells the Baghdad Brigade,
Military Intelligence Department, and special operations commands to go arrest
whoever they want. [Name withheld] relies on secret informants. He lets
officers arrest people based on vague suspicion and looks into the matter after
the fact – if the original charge can’t be substantiated,
he’ll fabricate another reason,” he said. “[Name withheld]
[issues orders for] arrests based purely on sectarianism. All of the judges in
the investigation committee accept bribes.”

[184] These
include, among others, human rights ministry monitoring inspectors, regular
investigations and reports; offices of the Inspector General and human rights directorates
in the Interior, Defense, and Justice ministries; and the Supreme Judicial
Council Investigations Committee. Human Rights Watch interview with inspector
in human rights directorate of security ministry (name withheld), Baghdad,
February 23, 2013 (stating that in the course of his inspections of detention
facilities, he has “documented many terrible things” but that they
would “never go anywhere” because of obstruction by his superiors
or because of judges’ failure to hear the cases or to issue judgments
against those cases they do hear); Human Rights Watch interview with by Aqil
Tarahy, Inspector General of the Interior Ministry, Baghdad, February 21, 2013;
Human Rights Watch interviews with Human Rights Minister Muhammad Shia Sudani, Baghdad,
December 20, 2012 and February 18, 2013.

[187]
Global Justice Project: Iraq, “The Many Lives of Article 136 (b) Criminal
Procedure Code 23 of 1971,” May 23, 2009,
http://gjpi.org/2009/05/23/the-many-lives-of-article-136b-criminal-procedure-code-23-of-1971/
(citing CPA Memorandum No. 3 of June 18, 2003, section (4) (s), and stating
that “Anecdotal evidence suggests that [the] law, [which allows a
minister to block implementation of an arrest warrant if the suspect is
carrying out official duties] has had a considerable effect on the number of
investigations brought against government officials, because it is presumed
that they will be protected by their ministers and therefore that energies
expended in investigating them will be wasted.”) (accessed July 9, 2013).

[188] Global Justice Project: Iraq,
“Criminal Procedure Code 23 of 1971,” April 25, 2009, http://gjpi.org/2009/04/25/criminal-procedure-code-23-of-1971/
(accessed June 29, 2013) (citing CPA Memorandum No. 3 of June 18, 2003, section
(4) (d), suspending the criminal procedure code’s paragraph 136, and
stating: “Subsequently, Interim Prime Minister Allawi reinstated 136(b).
Transitional Prime Minister Jaffari suspended it again when he came to office,
but then reinstated it once more. The Council of Representatives passed a law
on 18 September 2007 amending 136(b) and another law on 8 October 2007 revoking
136(b) but these laws have never been published in the Official Gazette and
therefore 136(b) remains in force. It was reported in May 2009 that the Prime
Minister had suspended the operation of the law in part.”).

[189] Human Rights
Watch interview with three currently serving criminal court judges (names
withheld), Erbil, May 24, 2013. See also “Cable 07Baghdad1593: Maliki
reshapes the national security system,” WikiLeaks, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2007/05/07BAGHDAD1593.html
(accessed July 9, 2013). In the cable, the US ambassador to Iraq at that time,
Ryan Crocker, states that Maliki blocked the arrest of an abusive federal
police commander by invoking Section 136(b) of the Iraqi Criminal Code. Instead
of being prosecuted, the commander was made a senior adviser in the Interior
Ministry and subsequently appointed to head the federal police 3rd Division.
See also “Iraq: Abusive Commander Linked to Mosul Killings,” Human
Rights Watch news release, June 11, 2013,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/06/11/iraq-abusive-commander-linked-mosul-killings.

[192]The Human Rights Committee, in its General Comment on Article 2,
states there is a “general obligation to investigate allegations of
violations promptly, thoroughly and effectively through independent and
impartial bodies” and that “failure by a State Party to investigate
allegations of violations could in and of itself give rise to a separate breach
of the Covenant.” The Committee also stated that where such
investigations “reveal violations of certain Covenant rights, States
Parties must ensure that those responsible are brought to justice. As with
failure to investigate, failure to bring to justice perpetrators of such
violations could in and of itself give rise to a separate breach of the
Covenant.” It added that the obligations to investigate and prosecute
“arise notably in respect of those violations recognized as criminal
under either domestic or international law, such… as torture and summary
and arbitrary killing.”

[212] A
parliamentarian and four judges said judges still regularly use secret
informant testimony as basis of arrests and courts continue to rely on secret
informants to issue arrest warrants and convictions. See Human Rights Watch
interview with parliamentarian Jabber al-Jaberi, Baghdad, May 9, 2013; Human
Rights Watch interview with former judge who worked in the Integrity Commission
(name withheld), Baghdad, April 30, 2013; Human Rights Watch interviews with
three criminal court judges (names withheld), Erbil, May 24, 2013.

[214] “Law
no. () of 2013, Amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, Law No. 23 of
1971,” copy provided to Human Rights Watch on May 8, 2013 via email by
Ahmed Aljoofy, Public Relations Department of the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister for Energy. The law has no number because parliament did not
pass it.

[216] Human
Rights Watch interview with Mohsen Saadoun, parliamentarian and member of parliamentary
legal committee, Baghdad, February 25, 2013. The other members of the Committee
of Five are Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Khalid al-Ataya, Hamid Mutlak, and Hadi
al-Ameri.

[220] “Iraq:
Mass Arrests, Incommunicado Detentions: Notorious Prison in Use a Year After
Government Said It Was Shut Down,” Human Rights Watch news release, May
15, 2012,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/15/iraq-mass-arrests-incommunicado-detentions
(accessed May 13, 2013).

[227] United
Nations General Assembly, “Body of Principles for the Protection of All
Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment,” A/RES/43/173, 76th
plenary meeting, December 9, 1988, http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/43/a43r173.htm
(accessed August 21, 2013); reprinted in “A Compilation of International
Instruments,” pp. 265-274.

[228] Article
13 of the Convention against Torture must be read together with Article 16
regarding allegations of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

[229] United
Nations, Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, August 30,
1955, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36e8.html) (accessed August 21, 2013).

[239] United
Nations General Assembly, “Body of Principles for the Protection of All
Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment,” A/RES/43/173, 76th
plenary meeting, December 9 1988, http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/43/a43r173.htm
(accessed August 21, 2013).

[240] UN
Commission on Human Rights, "Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence
against Women," E/CN.4/1998/54, January 26, 1998,
http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.1998.54.En?Opendocument
(accessed December 29, 2013).

[248] In
its “Consideration of reports submitted by States parties under article
19 of the Convention, Concluding observation of the Committee against torture
on Yemen,” the Committee expressed “great concern at the reported
practice of holding relatives of alleged criminals, including children and the
elderly, as hostages, sometimes for years at a time, to compel the alleged
criminals to surrender themselves to the police,” emphasizing that
“such practice is a violation of the Convention.” Consideration
of reports submitted by States parties under article 19 of the Convention,
Concluding observation of the Committee against torture on Yemen, CAT/C/YEM/CO/2/Rev.1
(May 25, 2010), http://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2fPPRiCAqhKb7yhso%2bCDq8S6uUO99X32yb4DTJnUG77byQeQPdatJbyhuVfYS8SD9aq2Ky%2bM4Ou2PDaytGdh7sTgwufglDgaLz1iMqXDBkRWkv3W5kvrGvkrZbBw1RJMRob63A2dS8zI1Touw%3d%3d.

[249] General
Comment No. 31 [80], “Nature of the General Legal Obligation Imposed on
States Parties to the Covenant,” CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13, May 26, 2004, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/58f5d4646e861359c1256ff600533f5f)
(accessed August 21, 2013).

[253] Basic
Principles on the Role of Lawyers, Eighth United Nations Congress on the
Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana, August 27 to
September 7, 1990, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.144/28/Rev.1 at 118 (1990), http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/i3bprl.htm)
(accessed August 21, 2013).